


Sunrise of the Land

by snewvilliurs



Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Real World, F/M, filed under: dumb things i do because OTP, hahaahahHAHAHAAH, i will give this wretched fandom the longfic it deserves 1!!!!!!1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-26 10:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snewvilliurs/pseuds/snewvilliurs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Real world!AU.  When Lebreau finds her only family in a long-lost uncle and spends a summer at his ranch, she gets more than she expected from one of his employees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meguhime](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=meguhime).



> Also, for ambience: a [soundtrack](http://8tracks.com/snewvilliurs/let-s-beat-the-summer) of the songs I've listened to while writing that also fit into the universe. Happy reading and listening!

Dust rose under the tires of Lebreau’s truck as she drove in through the gate and onto the gravelly road.  She slowed down and took a look around, a peaceful smile growing on her lips.  Stretches of land surrounded her, and a few kilometers away, she could see the lines of the stable buildings; the ranch was private and small in stature, despite the large distance it covered, and employed only a handful of permanent workers.  Stopping in front of the house, she turned off the engine and stepped out of the truck with a small sigh when she lifted the bed cover off the trunk.  Somehow, she’d managed to fit nearly all her belongings in that tiny space, but there were a few heavy things that her friends had helped her pack and that she could definitely not lift by herself.

“Hello?” she called, slipping her hands into the back pockets of her shorts.  She didn’t find someone until she had reached the barn, finding a worker pitching hay just outside in the sun.  He wore nothing from the waist up but gloves, having long since taken off his shirt and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans, and was extremely focused on his work.  Enough for Lebreau to be able to stop and take a good look at him—the sight was far from displeasing, muscles moving with every move, skin covered by a light sheen of sweat.

“I hope you’re wearing sunscreen,” she called after a moment, and he looked over to her, straightening up.  “Hey.  I’m Lebreau.”

He nodded, setting his pitchfork down and resting his hands on it.  “The niece, right?  Welcome.  I’m Rygdea, head cowboy.”

The introduction earned a snort from her as she shook the hand he’d extended towards her.  “You mean ranch hand, right?”

“Sue me, I think it sounds cool,” he said, giving her a brazen look.

“Uhuh,” she replied with a teasing smile and a small wave of her hand, then glanced back in the direction of her car and pointed to it.  “Do you think you could lend me a hand for a bit?  I just need a little help unloading my truck, there’s some boxes I can’t lift myself.”

“Sure thing.”

Rygdea dropped the pitchfork on the bale of hay, taking off his gloves and tapping them together before shoving them into another one of his pockets, following her to her truck.  He took one look at the trunk, then at her, and chuckled lightly to himself.  “Okay, let me guess.  Rich city girl gets caught partyin’ too hard by daddy and gets sent to uncle’s ranch to learn how to live a simpler and better oriented life.  How right am I?”

Starting to unload what she could from the truck, Lebreau didn’t even look at him, though she felt some frustration rise inside her; it surprised her how detached her next words sounded.  “Well, you got the location wrong.  The orphanage I grew up in is in a tiny seaside town.”

“Orpha—shit.  Sorry,” he muttered, his tone sobering up from its previous smug edge. 

She snorted again, reaching from just beside him for her guitar case.  “You should see the look on your face right now.  But really, don’t apologize, it’s not like I just found out I had an incurable illness.  Always been an orphan, always will be.  Just don’t pity me and we’ll be fine.”

“I won’t,” he said with a few nods, setting the last few boxes down on the porch.  “Can I ask you something, though?  How come you weren’t already living here, if you got an uncle?”

“Oh, you know how it goes.  Didn’t know I had any family until I was out of the orphanage and starting life on my own, and then suddenly I have one and it’s a little strange and there’s also a ranch?  So now I’m just trying out this thing for the summer.  Better story than your first guess, right?”

“Yeah, definitely,” he said with a small smile, awkwardly standing around while patting the sides of his thighs once he was done.  “Well, uh, I’ll let you get settled in and go back to work.  By the way, Boss is out of town until tomorrow, called earlier and said he was sorry he couldn’t welcome you in and all.”

She nodded and slung the strap of her guitar case over her shoulder before picking up a box, turning to go inside the house.  Almost as an afterthought, she spun back towards him once she was halfway through the door as he retreated in the direction of the barn, and called out to him.  “Hey, you know that whole rich city girl thing?  I think we could get along pretty well if you just didn’t assume things about me again, yeah?”

He smiled as he turned slightly, shielding his eyes from the sun to see her without having to squint.  “It was just payback for makin’ fun of the cowboy thing.”

“Still doesn’t make it sound any less lame.”

“Whatever you say, girlie!”

 

* * *

 

The first person she came across once she was inside was the cook, a stern-looking but bright woman who was already working on dinner for the evening.  After introducing herself, she showed Lebreau to the room her uncle had set up for her.  It was small, but by no means dark, with a wide window on the eastern wall that let the sunlight pour in and gave a long, stretching view of the horses in their pasture, near a small stream.  The floors were hardwood, matching the darker planks of wood that covered the walls and part of the slanted ceiling.

She lifted a hand to touch the slope with her fingertips, smiling to herself.  It was her first time having a room to herself; even now that she had left the orphanage, she shared a studio apartment with her two roommates, and they all slept close to each other.  But this felt intimate, and it held a sort of warmth that she didn’t know could be in just a small space between four walls.

Almost lovingly, she set her guitar down just beside the bed, sitting down on it and bouncing slightly on the mattress.  The springs creaked under her weight, and it was a bit hard, but the sheets were soft, and when she lay down on it and turned her head, the pillow smelled like fresh laundry.  After having spent most of the afternoon driving, she was just about ready to fall asleep and nap until sunset, but she forced herself to get up and go back downstairs to finish bringing her things up to her room.  When she was finished, she took a shower and changed into clothes a bit lighter than what she had been wearing earlier to go out and take a long walk, exploring what she could on foot until dinner.

Though all the workers except the cook and Rygdea lived in the other, smaller house, the dining room in the main house was large enough to accommodate everyone, and Lebreau had the pleasure of meeting all of her uncle’s employees, for what the cook later told her was a much livelier dinner than what they were used to.  They were all excited to have a pretty girl at the table, and she was glad to be responsible for such a playful mood, and to hear the goldmine of jokes and stories they all had.

After dinner, she tried to help with the dishes, but the cook turned her away when she saw her yawn and sent her straight to bed.  Driving alone for so long had tired her out, and when she got to bed, she could feel herself slowly fall asleep, but not for long.  She woke up to the sound of footsteps downstairs, and though she was tired, she couldn’t bring herself to fall asleep again, her eyes wide open in the dark and her heart pounding oddly inside her ribcage.  Rolling over to her side, she turned on the lamp on her nightstand, hoping it would help her feel a little bit less alone. 

She hated stagnating.  When she saw she couldn’t bring herself to go back to sleep, she got out of bed and quietly made her way downstairs, bare feet making very little noise on the floor.  The house was silent except for the ticking of an old clock on the wall, and she found Rygdea reading in the living room, sipping on a glass of whiskey.  For a moment, she only stood around awkwardly until he looked up at her, eyebrows raised.

“Not sleeping?”

She answered his question with a mildly embarrassed smile and a shake of her head.  “It’s my first time ever sleeping alone.  Feels kinda lonely.  What about you?  Staying up late?”

“Nah, I just always have a drink before bed on weekends.  Usually, Boss joins me, but tonight it’s just me and ol’ Steinbeck,” he said, holding up his worn copy of _East of Eden_ , though he closed the book and set it down on the coffee table, leaning back with his drink in hand.

“For some reason, I’m not even surprised that’s your kind of thing,” she said with a smile and sat down on the couch next to the armrest where he sat, far enough from him so that she could look at him without having to crane her neck.

“Hey, he’s a master, okay?  For the record, I cried when I first read _Of Mice and Men_.  And that’s non-negligible,” he told her in a playfully emphasized tone, pointing a finger at her.  She chuckled and held her hands up defensively, and silence fell over them until he spoke up again.  “So, I saw you got a guitar earlier.  What brand?”

“Seagull.  Do you know guitars?”

“Yeah, I got an old Gibson up in my room.  Don’t got much time to play, but I do head out into town to play at the bar once every two weeks.  But hey, Seagull for a seaside girl, kinda cute.”

“My roommates got it for me when I turned eighteen.  Thought they were being clever.”

He smiled, taking another sip from his drink.  “How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Weird, you look older than that.  And that’s a compliment, before you get mad at me.”

“Mmhm,” she hummed with a smile, closing her eyes and sinking deeper into the couch.  Her breathing evened, the small change having Rygdea tilting his head to look at her closer.

“You fallin’ asleep on me?”

She opened her eyes again and gave him a sheepish look as she shook her head.  “No, just resting my eyes for a bit.  I’m not the old one here.  What do you wanna talk about?” 

“You know what?  Just keep restin’ your eyes, you young thing.  I’ll be here, reading,” he said with a playful look and raised his book back in front of his face, watching out of the corner of his eye when she shifted so that she could lay her head against the armrest.  Again, the only sound in the house was that of the clock ticking, and the occasional rattling of the ice inside his glass whenever he took a drink.  By the time he had finished drinking, she was fast asleep, and he rose from his seat quietly, covering her up with a blanket that spent most of its time on the back of the couch before pouring the remaining ice in his glass into the sink, washing the glass, and heading to bed.

 

* * *

 

The next time she woke, the sun was starting to rise, and she spent a moment confused by her whereabouts and the time of day.  She rubbed her eyes as she sat up, the blanket sliding down her shoulder, and groaned softly at the ache in her muscles from sleeping in the same more or less comfortable position on the couch all night. 

“Good, you’re up,” Rygdea said as he passed the living room, already clothed, all but ready for outside work with his cowboy hat—the only thing that was missing was his boots, Lebreau’s uncle having strict rules about wearing shoes inside the house.  “I’d advise you go sit down, we’re all about to eat.”

“Wh—this is the ass crack of dawn,” she mumbled.  “Do you guys always get up so early?”

Rygdea snorted, a little bit disbelievingly.  “So I wasn’t that wrong about the city girl thing, seaside town or not.  Welcome to life in the country, honey.”

Though she could hardly remember ever waking up this early, she got up and headed into the dining room after Rygdea, tying up her hair into a short ponytail to make herself look relatively presentable.  She groggily sat through breakfast, which was peppered by the workers teasing her for being so unaccustomed to waking up early, and even forced herself to help the cook with the dishes, but by the time they were finished, her eyes were perpetually watery with how much she was yawning.

Seeing everyone working outside when she went back to her room and looked out the window as she pulled the curtains over it, she couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty to be going back to bed.  This lifestyle was new to her, and though she had never been used to a life of lazing around either, she felt like a heavy contrast against the men employed by her uncle.  But those guilty thoughts didn’t last long, not when she climbed into her bed and relaxed back against her pillow, the soreness in her neck ebbing away as she relaxed.  Soon, she was asleep again, waking up by herself a few hours later, right around the same time her uncle’s car pulled up in front of her house.

Once she’d gotten dressed, she stood near the front door, rubbing her arm nervously.  She’d talked with him face to face over a few video calls, sure, but never in person, and she wasn’t sure how to express her gratitude that he was giving her so much after they’d only just come into each other’s life.  A small, moderately uncertain smile made its way onto her features as he walked out of the car, slamming the door shut with an air that she thought just screamed cool.  When he noticed her, his face lit up in a way she had never seen on someone else’s face for her, and her stomach fluttered with the feeling that someone cared for her.

Without an ounce of pretense, or a touch of awareness that they were practically strangers, he wrapped her into a hug and said her name, all in the same warm way that she was used to with big men like her best friends.

It felt a lot like home.

 

* * *

 

They had started catching up after the workers had cleared out after dinner, only the cook and Rygdea remaining, as usual.  The cook had already gone to bed, and Rygdea had a glass of wine with them, but didn’t extend his stay too much, knowing that, for now, it wasn’t his place to be.  Once he was finished, he stood and patted his boss’s shoulder.

“Night, Daddy Bear,” he said, then made the gesture of tipping an imaginary hat towards Lebreau, having left his near the front door at the end of the day.  “Girlie.”

“Good night, cowboy,” she smiled in return, fingers circling the foot of her wineglass distractedly.

“You two gettin’ along?” her uncle asked.

“Well, I only got here yesterday, but he seems like a pretty cool guy.  Made it easy for me to feel at home and everything.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he smiled.  “He’s my best worker, and I’m really fond of him.”

She returned his smile as he poured her some more wine, and soon they got to talking.  She spoke of her childhood, of what her life had become, and he told her about her parents, from the basic facts that she couldn’t possibly remember to all the little details, the stories that he remembered with a fondness that tugged at her heart.

“The room you’re sleeping in was for you, originally.  Your parents were all for letting you grow up for some time in the country, but then... You were born, and one day I just stopped hearing from them altogether.  I searched for them, and for you, far and wide, and for a really long time, but nothing ever turned up.  Your mom was a secretive girl, and your dad supported her with everything he had—I don’t know what could have possibly happened.  One month, I thought the three of you were dead, the next, I convinced myself that you’d all just run away for some reason.”

When he sat and silence for a moment, she chose not to say anything else until he spoke up again.  “Lebreau, I’m sorry.  I should’ve never given up—I could’ve found you sooner, and your life might have been so much different—”

“Hey, don’t say that,” she frowned.  “My life is just fine as it is.  Not common, but I’m thankful for the stuff I’ve gone through, the people that are in my life now and that wouldn’t be if I had grown up here.  It doesn’t matter to me what could have been.  I’m just...happy I have it now, you know?  I never thought I’d ever have a family, and now I do.  Isn’t that just amazing on its own?”

Her uncle smiled, looking relieved by her words.  “Well, look at that.  I’ve just been taught by a kid.  You’re really mature for your age, aren’t you?  To have that kind of outlook on life.”

“I dunno,” she said with a shrug, lifting her glass to her lips to take a drink.  “You’re the second one here to tell me I don’t seem my age in some way, but I never really thought about the...way I think, or whatever.  I mean, it’s not like I try to look at life a certain way, other than the fact that I try to stay as positive as possible.  That’s just how I am.”

“You’re starting to sound like your mom,” he replied softly, with a fond smile on his lips as he finished his glass and stood.  “I’m gonna head to bed, kiddo.  Big day tomorrow.”

“Isn’t every day a big day here?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.  Nice big days, though.  Good night.”

“Night.”

Once she was alone, she leaned back in her chair and let herself stare off into space, though her eyes eventually settled on the wall phone of the kitchen.  She had stopped carrying her cell phone on her when she realized that there was no reception outside of the nearest town, and though she had been meaning to call home since she had gotten there, it had just kept slipping her mind.  After checking the clock, she got up and dialed Gadot’s number, knowing he was the most likely to pick up his phone at any hour (Snow tended to forget he even had a phone).  It was still early—late in the country was too early to even start going out—and she figured they were most likely having a take-out dinner in front of the TV because she wasn’t there to cook for them.

When it went to voicemail, she sighed and leaned against the wall as she started to leave a message, “Hey, it’s me.  Why the hell aren’t you picking up?  Did you both finally die because you forgot to feed yourselves like proper adults?  Anyway, I’ll check on you kids another time.  My phone’s got no reception here, so just make sure you don’t call the ranch at weird hours if you really need to talk to me, okay?  Everyone’s sleeping already.  Well.  Good night, big guy.”

She hung up with a small frown, feeling a strange sort of loneliness settling in around her.  It had only just dawned on her that this was the longest she’d ever spent without hearing their voices, even if it had only been two days, and with everyone in the house asleep, she felt even more alone.  For a moment, she simply stood by the phone as if waiting for it to ring, but it didn’t.  Of course it didn’t.  She rubbed her eyes and rinsed the wine glasses, leaving them in the sink before heading to bed.

It wasn’t until the sky was starting to become clear that she finally fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Even after she had been at the ranch for a week, her sleep schedule was still completely thrown off, enough so that she spent most of her days napping in her room or outside on the porch, soaking in the warm sun in hopes that it would invigorate her.  But even the sun in the country seemed different than it was in the seaside, and her naps were more sunbathing than anything else.

Whenever she was awake during the day, Rygdea would nudge her side with the tip of his boot and tease her for a bit before going back to his work.  She liked to play along and return the fire in the way she knew best, which only seemed to amuse him more, and she had to admit she liked the way his little smirks would grow into straight charming smiles, digging small dimples into his cheeks that she definitely enjoyed seeing.  (Though she wasn’t sure whether she appreciated those dimples as much as the ones on his back just above the waistline of his pants that she got to see whenever he took his shirt off, which, in the summer heat, happened just as much as she wanted it to.)

On Saturday night, he barely sat long enough at the dinner table to eat, hurriedly going upstairs to take a shower.  Once he came back, dressed in distressed but clean jeans and a plaid shirt, he had his guitar in hand and Lebreau almost bolted out of her seat, remembering what he had told her on her first night.

“Hey, are you going into town to play?”

“Yeah, why?  You wanna come with?”

She put her hands together and gave him the cutest pleading look she good manage without making herself feel nauseated.  “Please?”

“Sure,” he said with a shrug, though he seemed amused by her act, and smiled as he jerked his head in the direction of the front door.  “No need to beg, y’know.”

Her smile went wide and she held up a hand in front of herself to signal him to wait, asking him for a minute to go change into something nicer to go out in.  She knew that the bar ( _the_ bar, she’d noted when he mentioned it) in town probably wasn’t what she was used to and that day-to-day clothes would be more suitable, but she didn’t really see herself going to a bar in faded shorts and a light button-up shirt that had once belonged to Gadot and fitted her loosely.  Rygdea had obviously been expecting to wait for her a whole five to ten minutes, a surprised look showing on his face when she came back down the stairs so quickly he thought she probably had thrown the clothes she had been wearing to the ground.

“Ready,” she said around the hair-tie she held between her teeth, gathering her hair into a short ponytail and toeing on her shoes.

“Multitasking, huh,” he commented, clearing his throat at the pointed look his boss gave him when he saw him looking at the way Lebreau’s sweater, tucked into her high-waist chinos, hugged the curves of her torso.  “Okay, let’s go.”

“I’m so happy to be going out into town,” she said with a smile once they were in the car, breaking the comfortable silence as she sagged a little lower into the seat.  He was a quiet driver, and while she didn’t particularly mind that, she was in too good a mood not to talk.  Taking his eyes off the road, he briefly glanced at her to give her a small smile.

“Miss civilization already?”

“Well, it’s not that I don’t like being cut off, because it’s nice to live peacefully like that, you know?” she paused to chew on her lip thoughtfully.  “At the risk of sounding like a clingy teenager, I just miss talking to my friends every day.  Somehow it’s so much harder to get a hold of them with the landline at the house than it usually is with my phone.  A lot less running into them in the kitchen, too.”

“Have you known them a while?”

She had to chuckle at that—a while was a massive understatement.  “All my life.  We grew up together and we’ve never been separated until now.  They’re like brothers to me.”

“Brothers?” he asked, eyebrows rising in surprise, though it quickly shifted to amusement at his own reaction.  “I don’t know why I’m acting surprised.  You’re handlin’ yourself pretty well with the boys here, and they can be pretty...well, you’ve talked to them.”

“Yeah, I have,” she laughed, pulling her phone from her pocket.  They were still in the middle of nowhere, from her perspective, and it still had no reception.  She’d already forgotten about it, distracted by the conversation, when it lit up and buzzed in her hand with missed calls and texts.  There was one voicemail from Gadot, and the simple prospect of hearing his voice made her smile.  Since she had called him and left a message, she hadn’t gotten to speak to him even once yet, and she missed him more than she could say.  “Hey, do you mind if I listen to my messages for a bit?”

“Nah, not at all.”

She watched the lazy wave of his hand lifting from the wheel and smiled at him as she brought her phone to her ear, sinking even lower into her seat and bringing her knuckles to her lips to hide her goofy smile (not that Rygdea couldn’t see it out of the corner of his eye even then).

“I’ll have you know we’re doing just fine without you,” came Gadot’s voice from her phone’s earpiece, exaggeratedly flippant even with the grainy distortion.  The act was short, however, his tone already more honest.  “I mean, we’re surviving.  It’s weird not having you around telling us what to do, though.  And Snow’s decided that your not being around means he can not wear clothes around the house if he doesn’t feel like it, so I’m either about to hang myself or drive over there to bring you home because I’ve already had his balls way too close to my face to be comfortable with myself anymore.  Anyway, call me back whenever.  Ain’t gonna try calling the ranch and risking waking everyone up, that’s too much responsibility.”

The sound of her laughing at her phone was enough to make Rygdea chuckle at her, throwing another glance to the side at her as she looked at her texts.  Most of them had come in before she had called to say that she had no reception, and unsurprisingly, they were either questions (“Where’s the cooking oil?”) or what she suspected were drunk messages from Gadot and Snow both telling her how much they missed her already.

“This is going to be a long summer,” she said, smiling.

“Well, for them.”

She  looked at him with a smile, quirking an eyebrow.  “Really, huh?”

“Yep.” 

She didn’t ask or comment; they settled into pleasant silence for the rest of the drive.

 

* * *

 

She had to expect that the only bar for a few thousand miles was going to be a little seedy, small, and a meeting place for men long past thirty who smelled of horses and wore cowboy hats permanently.  And they all, obviously, knew each other like peas in a pod; she walked into stranger territory at Rygdea's side and had a flinching movement where she took a step closer to him as if needing the security.

“Well, this is a sausage fest,” she said quietly, and he didn't miss the way she wrinkled her nose or took a step to the side so that her wrist brushed his.

“That was my line,” he commented, waving to the bartender and putting a hand on her back—carefully high—to guide her forward before she would get it in her head to turn around and go wait for him in the car.  “Or is it that you don't have the interest—”

“Trust me, I do.  Just not that kind of sausage fest.”

He laughed, heartily, and moved his hat to her head with a fond pat on the back.  “Just try to enjoy yourself and have a drink, okay?  Tell the bartender it's on me, I gotta go set up now.  But don't get drunk, please.”

“Don't want Daddy Bear to get the claws out because I got drunk under your watch?

He winked.  “Exactly.”

Then, he went off to hop onto the small stage at the other end of the place, and she set her shoulders, pushing his hat up off her eyes before going to sit at the bar.  The bartender—and she had a good guess that he was also the owner—smiled at her as she did, wiping down glasses in a way that made him look exactly like saloon bartenders in western movies.  Well, not that she had seen many.  Just _Back to the Future III_.

“Heya, li’l lady.  You here with our Rygdea?”

“Yeah.  Said he was buying me a drink, too, so I'll have a draught beer, please,” she answered with a smile, propping her elbows on the countertop as she craned her head to look over her shoulder at him.  He looked like a fish in the water, there on the stage with his guitar in his hand as he greeted some guys who she assumed were band members; the smile on his face lit it up to the eyes, and the dimples in his cheeks seemed even more prominent than they always were.  It was the same look she'd seen on his face while he was riding the horses two afternoons before. 

The bartender grabbed her attention back when he put a mug of beer down in front of her, the froth nearly spilling over like it had been closely calculated.  “So how long have you been together?  He ain’t ever brought a girl here before, so you must be special.”

Her hand stilled against the handle before she could bring the mug to her lips.  “Oh, no, no, it's not—he works for my uncle.  I just wanted to have a night out and this was a nice opportunity, to have him drive me and all.”

“So you're the niece he's been tellin' everyone about,” the bartender said, smiling, then gave a shrug and a small nod of his head, giving a look that said he wasn't going to keep her attention divided as Rygdea started playing.  “Well, he still must like ya.  Ain’t never seen that hat on anyone's head but his.  Looks good on you, though.”

She gave a smile, strained, before turning away and watching him on the stage.  The man was nice, but she wasn't sure how to react to all this talk of her potentially dating him—he was attractive, and she knew that if she had to have a type, it was ruggedly handsome, and he fit the bill.  But she'd immediately crossed him off as unavailable due to the fact that he worked for her uncle and was at least ten years older than her (not that that had ever stopped her, but this was different), and _dating_?  That was certainly not her type.  So he'd lent her his hat—the gesture had seemed more brotherly to her than anything else, just like the warning not to get drunk.  She drank a third of her beer nearly all in one go as he began to play, drinking down with it the curse that rose from her throat because his playing, his voice as he sang—it added so much more to what could already be a problem.  But still she listened. 

When he took a break, after half an hour, maybe three quarters, she wasn't sure—she turned back to her beer, already growing lukewarm as she nursed it, and was glad that the bartender was busy talking and laughing with a man who had to be an old friend of his, with how well they were getting along.  She jumped when a hand snaked around her waist and a total stranger spoke down her ear.

“Hey, sexy.  Not often we see pretty young things like you around here.”

She spoke to through gritted teeth, slapping his hand off—but like a magnet, he persisted on putting it back on her.  “I guess I just stay home more than I'd like so that I don't get felt up by pigs.  Get your hand off me before I tear your arm out.”

“Pretty face and feisty, just how I like 'em.  You like playin' hard to get, darlin'?”

“Leave me alone,” she said, voice low as she rose to her feet swiftly and angrily, fist balled up.

And then there was Rygdea.

“Hey, dude, back off.  That's my boss's niece, she's way too young.”

“If she's old enough to have a drink here legally, she's old enough to be in my bed.”

 _Guys are gonna bug you_ , Gadot had said when they had taken her out to a club for the first time on her eighteenth birthday, when they already had two years of going out under their belts, being older than her.  And he'd looked into her eyes, serious and protective, and told her this, wanting her to be safe, even though Snow had been teaching her how to defend herself since they were teenagers.  _I know you won't want a white knight to come defend you, so just do this—_ , he'd started to say, and she'd punched him in the nose to demonstrate what he was going to teach her.  He'd laughed through teary eyes even though it made his face hurt more.

Lebreau balled up her fist, drew her arm back in a tight swing, and sent her knuckles colliding with the man's face.

“The next time you want to hit on a girl like that, remember the beating I'm about to give you,” she said, about to go back for more when Rygdea hooked his arms under hers and held her back, whispering surprisingly calmly in her ear.  She didn't hear his words above her blood pumping in her ears and her breathing too heavy, and she shook him off as the bartender distantly said something about the three of them needing to take a rain check for the night.  The man with the bleeding nose had already left, and she headed for the exit as Rygdea went back to pick up his things.

She shook her hand, stretching sore fingers as he dug for her phone and called Gadot.

“So you didn't get trampled by a horse, that's good.”

“Hey to you too, big guy,” she said, smiling; it was good to hear his voice, if only just to calm her down.  He heard her sigh deeply into the phone.

“You sound shaken up.  Did something happen?  Should I come pick you up?”

The suggestion was easy, almost like a reflex; and it was one, she realized, because they both knew she was miles away, and still he asked and meant it—simply because he wasn't reminded of the distance straight away.

“I'm fine, just kinda punched a guy in the face.  I blame you and Snow, by the way.  With those fists quicker than your brains and all.  Just, get my mind off it, please?”

“Talk to me about the ranch.  How's your uncle?  Where do you sleep?  Have you been working around, or—”

“That reminds me,” she said, cutting him off, “I have to tell you about this guy.  Head ranch hand, or head cowboy as he calls himself.  He isn't joking when he says that like I'm not joking when I say he's really hot.”

“I feel like I'm walking into an erotica novel.”

"Shut up," she said, unable to hide the smile from her voice.  The door opened and closed behind her and she looked over her shoulder to see Rygdea, guitar in one hand, dangling his car keys in the other.  “Gotta go.  Head cowboy's here to drive me home.”

Gadot whistled.  “That's gonna be a nice drive.  Call me soon to tell me more, a'right?  I'm dyin' to hear about someone who isn't Serah.”

“Oof, the pain.  I'll call you tomorrow night.”

Rygdea arched an eyebrow at her as she hung up.  “Talkin' about me to your not-at-all-girls girlfriends?"

“Ha,” she said, mocking, though her expression quickly shifted to something more sheepish.  “Only mentioned that guy who graciously gave me a lift to somewhere with reception and whose evening I probably ruined.  Sorry about cutting your jam time short.”

He shook his head with an honest smile, sliding into the driver's seat as she climbed in the car as well.  “Don't worry about it.  That guy's a real fiend, and he deserved a swift kick in his dirty ass.  Never did really register before when it was guys who beat him up.  Maybe this time he's learned a lesson.”

“I hope so,” she said, looking down at her hands as he started the engine and backed up onto the main road.  “My friends are always telling me I have a little bit of a temper.”

“I'd call that one hell of a temper.  You kinda scared me, you know.  Thought you was gonna punch me there for a second because I tried to step in like a macho.”

“Yeah, I considered it, but then you held me back like you'd hold back a bro, so I forgave you there.  You're fine.”

"No one says bro anymore."

“Says the guy who lives in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and clearly knows nothing.”

He snorted and turned on the radio; country again, as always.  She fell asleep in minutes.


	3. Chapter 3

After the first month went by, Lebreau had grown accustomed to the slow life on the ranch—and grown to like it as well.  She helped out with cooking all three meals every day and had the rest of the day to herself, due to her uncle firmly insisting that he wouldn't make an important guest like her work any more than he already let her.  There were plenty of things for her to keep herself busy with; exploring the land on foot (there was a _lot_ of ground to cover), training, cleaning the house—in secret, lest she get scolded for doing something that could count as work—and relaxing.  That, she hadn't done in a while.

The sun near the barn was always nice right after lunch and the clouds fluffy to look at.  She lay back in the soft grass with a book and read a few pages, looked at the sky, and got to reading again; after some time, she had a tendency to doze off with the book thrown over her face.

She was woken by the nudging of a boot against her thigh and light hitting her closed eyes as the book was picked up from her face.

“Wake up, sunshine, ain't night out,” Rygdea said from above her, playfulness in his tone.  He thumbed the worn cover of the paperback with a smile, smoothing over the curving corners.  “ _Of Mice and Men_?  Awesome.  You like it so far?”

She sat up groggily, shielding her eyes from the sun to look up at him.  “Well, small animals get killed so I'm not too ecstatic about that, but it's nice.  Reminds me of you and this place.”

“Caring about bunnies and puppies now, are we?  Careful, people might start to suspect that you're a girl.”

“Caring about animals isn't girly, it's just human.”

“Yeah, you're right.  Otherwise all the employees here would be chicks, right?”

“And you'd have a huge vagina.”

He smiled and nudged her with his boot again before offering his hand.  “Guilty.  C'mon, speaking of caring about animals, I'm teachin' you to ride today.  No excuses.”

“Don't you have work to do?”

Looking at him against the sun, she scrunched up her nose and took his hand, letting him pull her up and dusting off the backs of her legs.  His fingers lingered around her wrists and let go to pluck blades of grass from the back of her shirt.

“Running the horses is part of the job, y'know.  Don't want 'em to get all lazy and fat.  Didn't you notice that's what I do most of the afternoon every day?”

“Well, as much as I think you have a cute face, I don't exactly pay attention to your schedule,” she said, teasing.  And he looked too damn pleased with the compliment, offhanded as it was.

He gave her shoulder a push in the direction of the house.  “Go put on some decent pants and shoes.  I'd recommend a hat, too.  Your uncle probably has a spare somewhere.”

“If you think I'm going to wear a cowboy hat, one of your horsies must have kicked you in the head,” she called over her shoulder as she walked back to the house.  She changed into a pair of capris, ankle boots, and put on a baseball cap she'd inadvertently packed when it belonged to Snow, with the logo of some sports brand or other on the front; Rygdea shook his head with a smile when he saw her playfully challenging look, the mare at his side nudging his arm.  Almost in a reflex, he brought his hand up to stroke her crest.

“Miss Lebreau,” he greeted, mock bowing to her.  “I'd like to introduce you to Miss Nora, my favourite lady here.  She's sweet and she doesn't take anyone's shit, and she's got one hell of a temper if you get on her bad side.  Reminds me of you, actually.  I think you two'll hit it off pretty well.  Here, come say hi.”

“...How?” she asked, looking at the horse cautiously.  He walked closer to her side, then glanced at her for permission before taking her wrist, and guiding her hand between the mare's eyes, down her nose.  He let go and she stroked her, looking into her big eyes with a small, growing smile.  “It's not so hard as I thought.”

He smiled, patting the horse's neck affectionately.  “Right?  She likes ya already.  Now, come on, gotta get you up here.”

She took an instinctive step back, looking warily at the horse and then back at him.  “Wait, now?  Before I even know anything?”

“Yeah, of course.  This ain't a university, I can teach you as we go.  Useless to tell you all that stuff beforehand.  You scared?”

“No, I'm not—it's just really high and I've never ridden a horse before.  I don't wanna do anything that could hurt her or anything,” she admitted.

“Look, I've been doing it since I was just this high,” Rygdea said, placing a hand just above his knee.  “I know horses better than people.  I'll be here with you the whole time, right next to you, and I'll make sure you won't hurt her.  Anyway, no offence, but—you and her in a fight, my money's on her.  Do you trust me?  Can you do that?”

She made a small sound high in her throat, moving her gaze from the mare to him, his honest blue eyes, the easy lines of his smile and the way his cheeks dimpled when he teased her—ever since the first night, he'd always acted like she'd never been a stranger.  She trusted him.  “Yeah.”

“That's my girl,” he said happily, clapping his hands and rubbing them together before going to the side of Nora, gesturing for Lebreau to stand in front of the saddle.  “Since you're clearly in shape with all that workin' out you do, I wanna see you try to get up on the saddle without my help.  So, all you gotta do is hold the pommel firm, get that foot in the stirrup, and push yourself up and the other foot in the other stirrup.  And don't swing your leg too much, or that'll move the saddle, so you keep your weight tight in those abs, a'right?”

She smacked his hand away when he tried to pat her stomach, which only seemed to put him in an even better mood, though she wasn't quite sure what was so amusing about it.  With a determined sigh, she looked up at the saddle and gripped the pommel, placing her left foot in the stirrup as instructed and then pulling herself up onto the saddle, throwing her right leg to the other side.  Then, she looked down at him in surprise at how easy it had been.

“See?  You're already up there and it's not so bad, is it?” he asked, smiling as he fixed the position of her feet and tugged at a few straps on the saddle to make sure they were tight enough.  "Now, try to keep your feet like that, as close as just above the middle of the arch as possible, and with your heels angled down.  You'll see why that's necessary when you gallop.  Make sure to square your hips an' your shoulders, always keep your back straight.  Your toes pointin' straight, too, so you're not rubbing your heels on her while you ride.  Good?”

“I think so,” she said with a small nod, reviewing the information in her mind.  Nora blew, and she absentmindedly let go of the pommel with one hand to rub her neck.

“Oh, yeah, and you can just hold on to the pommel for today.  I'll be guidin' her with this, so you won't need to do anything with the reins ‘cept keep them in your hands,” he said and held up the lead line, tied to the halter.  Then, he let go of it, and held up a finger instead as he turned to jog to another saddled horse eating grass not too far away.  “Stay right there, yeah?”

“Like I'm going anywhere on this thing,” she muttered to herself with a small smile as Nora shifted her weight under her and snorted.  Rygdea mounted the other horse quickly and with clear ease of habit, as if his body knew every step of the way without him having to even think about it.  He trotted over to Lebreau with a wide smile on his face, taking the lead and wrapping the end around his hand. 

“This guy's Lindblum.  He's been with me since I turned twenty, so we have a good riding distance under our belts,” he said, patting the stallion's neck affectionately.   “So, you ready?”

“You make it sound like we're about to jump off a plane with no parachute.”

“Nah, ridin' a horse seems a lot more fun to me,” he said, winking, and then clucked his tongue; Nora started to walk smoothly, and when they were side by side, he tightened his thighs and his horse began to walk as well.  “Not too scary so far?”

“I don't think so.  This is pretty nice, actually.”

“See?  It's in your blood.”

He smiled, pulling the horses away from the pasture, in the direction opposite the entrance; deeper into the ranch and following the small stream that crossed it.  The way he rode Lindblum made it seem like they were one, his body rocking along with the horse's rhythm smoothly.  Lebreau tried to relax and let her body move the same way.  They rode side by side in silence as Rygdea let her get used to simply walking, the sun beating down on them warmly.  All the time he spent outside made his skin seem almost golden where he'd rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, his hands rough and firm from the work.  She felt like a teenager when heat coiled in her belly and she knew she wasn't warm because of the sun; and it grew much worse when he turned his head and smiled at her.

“You wanna try trotting now?”

She couldn't refuse that offer.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Rygdea was determined to teach her a few more things, and she could see how his eyes shone with the promise of sharing that which was most important to him; he taught her how to guide the horse by communicating through her thighs and the reins, rather than forcing the horse into movement.  Lebreau liked his approach, she really did—but her mind wasn't always on riding, despite the fact that she liked using the reins herself, and that the few seconds of galloping he'd made her try had made her forget how saddle-sore she was (her first reply when he'd suggested going to ride again had been “my ass hurts”).  Rather, it was on him, and she hated how silly it was that she was so suddenly and so powerfully realizing just how much she was attracted to him.

Once they had ridden in a wide circle around the house and once again along the stream, it was long past time for her to go help out with making dinner; the sun was already lower in the sky, the afternoon nearing its end.  Rygdea’s hat cast shadows on his face when they neared the stables and she looked over to him.

“I don’t think I’m gonna be able to walk tomorrow,” she said, letting go of the reins as the horses came to a halt to flex her fingers and curl them slowly—she still held them tightly in her hands the same way she had held the wheel when she had first learned to drive, and her knuckles had gotten cramped.  He didn’t fail to notice this, smiling when he did.

“You’ll survive.  Fit lady like you, you should know that when you’re sore you just gotta do it again until it doesn’t hurt anymore, right?”

“Yeah, but I think tomorrow I’m just gonna lie down in bed and be a bum.  At this rate, I’m never gonna finish _Of Mice and Men_ if I just let you take me away from it all the time, aren’t I?” she said, lifting an eyebrow to give him a playfully pointed look.

His smile was bright as he hopped off his horse and to the ground, again with a fluidity that still impressed her.  “I was about fifteen when I read it for the first time.  Had to work before and after school, so in between all that, I didn’t have much time to read, so I just carried it around in my back pocket so I could read it whenever I had a second, even if it was just a sentence or a paragraph.  It got all beat up and dirty and I ended up with a bruise on my ass for sittin’ on the corner of it, but it was really worth it.”

“Sounds really nice,” she said softly, looking down at him from where she was still on Nora.  “Why’d you tell me that?”

“Dunno,” he said with a shrug, brushing the subject aside.  His smile was laced with fondness and reminiscence; she wondered if she looked like that when she talked about her memories with Snow and Gadot.  He went to stand beside her, raising his arms and motioning for her to get off.  When she had one foot out of the stirrups and her leg on the same side as the other, she felt her hands firm on her waist, helping her down from the horse with her back to him.  She turned, and his hands did not linger, but she felt herself somewhat unsteady as she looked at him this up close and saw crystalline blue in his eyes where the rays of the sun hit his face.

“It would probably be a lot less trouble for you if you just let me learn how to get down from the horse by myself, you know,” she commented, and her voice was too quiet to her own liking.  His smile was softer than usual.

“Yeah.”

He tipped his hat upwards by nudging the brim with his finger.  She sucked in a breath and turned away, fingers searching for the lead.

“I’ll bring Nora back to her box.”

“I—I could’ve done it myself,” he muttered to her back, but didn’t follow after her immediately.  He was almost certain she was avoiding him when she crossed him on her way out of the stables and didn’t even look at him. 

Once she was outside, she took a deep breath, pausing to look up at the sky and sigh.  She brought a hand up to touch the nape of her neck and her skin was warm; she only hoped it was sunburn.  But she also knew it wasn’t.


	4. Chapter 4

North of the houses, there was a dip in the ground where there had once been another stream, which had long since dried up; a rounded bridge crossed it where the water had once been at its deepest, and the walls of it were low enough that Lebreau could sit under it with her back against the concrete.  The stream had never been wide, and when she stretched out her legs, her feet were almost in the middle of the stream.  Once she found it, it became her favourite spot to be when she wanted to be alone; her guitar was a good companion, and she liked the way her voice and the sound of the strings bounced gently off the stone walls, all this while being shaded from the sun.

The pads of her fingers were growing sore from pinching the strings, now that it had been some time since she had arrived to the ranch and that she took much less time for playing than she was expecting before she had left home.  Her voice, too, was slightly different from disuse, but it was quickly warming up to singing once again—here she could hit all the notes full on without the fear of being heard, without needing to muffle them with falsetto to avoid being too loud.  It was nice, to sing her heart out into nature at such a distance from all the workers; it felt free, liberating, and it was a feeling she’d never had in the past when restraining herself.

She didn’t stop to think of songs to play, letting her fingers lead her into the first melody that she knew how to play and that came to mind.  Learning to play chords while singing had been tough at first, but now she tried every song she had heard and that she could sing, charmed by melodies rather than lyrics—she let her heart be taken by the sound of music and not the words, simply to fulfill her need to sing without needing to say something when she spoke her mind so easily without a guitar in her hands.

_Kiss me on my shoulder, and tell me it's not over_   
_I promise to always come home to you_   
_Remind me that I'm older to be brave, smart, swe—_

She stopped short, swallowing the words as her fingers halted on the strings when she noticed Rygdea standing off to the side of the bridge, his own guitar in hand and an entertained smile on his face.  It grew wider when she stopped, alight with amusement at the sight of her embarrassment.

“Sorry for intrudin’, miss,” he said, but he didn’t sound sorry at all.  She pursed her lips together and to the side in a childish expression that only seemed to please him further.  “Who’s the lucky guy who’s probably an ass?”

She had to chuckle at that.  “No one.  I just really liked the melody.”

“Hmm, right.  Not the type to sing about your feelings, much less silly boys, I bet.  Can I sit?”

“Are you being patronizing?” she asked, looking up at him with a lifted brow.  She was genuinely unsure of what he meant; he tone was light, but it was rare that it wasn’t, and he’d fallen into a habit of teasing her.  It had never felt like anything short of fond, but now, she was having her first doubts.

He seemed surprised that she would think so, and his eyes were honest when he shook his head.  “Oh, no—did I sound like a dick?  I just thought that you might be like that.  Y’know, like, you’re cool and—”

“Sheepishness does not suit you,” she commented emphatically, and it was her turn to be amused.  She gestured with her chin to come closer.  “Come on, you can come sit.  So, you really think I’m cool?”

“Yeah, of course.  Maybe I’ve just gotten old, but I don’t remember twenty-two-year-old girls bein’ that intimidating back in my day.  You just have this, I don’t know—aura.  That you don’t wanna be fucked with.  And that’s great!  But it’s hella scary to me,” he admitted, hands awkward on his guitar as he sat against the wall opposite her, setting it down across his thigh and stretching out his legs, one of his ankles brushing hers.

She smirked.  “You’re being sheepish again.”

“See, that’s why you’re scary!”  He shook his head again, his easy smile finding itself back onto his face again, and he began to strum a melody; it seemed random, just an alignment of a few chords in a steady rhythm.  “So, what songs do you know?”

“What kind of question is that?  I can’t give you a list of everything I know—even I don’t remember all of it.”

He gave her a small smile and launched into a song that she thought she vaguely knew.  The chords and rhythm were heavy, but not aggressive; he pitched his voice lower than usual to hit the right notes and soon she followed, trying to match with the melody as best as she could.  He smiled at her through the lyrics and it shone through his voice.

_A man can't face the cold hard truth_   
_With nothing less than ninety proof_   
_And closing time is when I’ll leave_   
_‘Til then it's just between the bottle and me_

She could barely contain her laughter by the time he struck out the last note, bending her head and putting a hand up over her face to hide her smile.  Her fingers smelled like copper.

“That is so country.”

He had to laugh, too.  “Have you _met_ me?”

“That was my point exactly.”

Leaning forward, he crossed his legs and began to play random chords again, as if he was waiting for the inspiration of a song to come to him.  She watched him for a moment, doing the same and matching up into harmony, then stood and went to sit closer to him, crossing her legs as well as she faced him.

“It’s your turn to pick a song, y’know,” he said, tone pointed but light as he brought his hand up to hold his pick between his lips, using his fingers and thumb to stroke the strings with more precision.  It was almost like wait music.

“That’s a silly rule, you already listened to me.  In secret, no less.”

“Well, this ain’t the ladies’ room, is it?”

She rolled her eyes and shrugged, though she still couldn’t fight the smile on her face, and crossed her arms on top of her guitar to rest her chin over them and look up at him through her eyelashes.  His cheeks were tight with a smile strained by his lips closed over the pick, and he held her gaze, silently questioning the sudden calmness of the atmosphere.  Tilting her head, she reached over to flick at the brim of his hat—briefly, she tried to think of how many times she’d seen him without it since she had begun living at the ranch.  Only when he was inside, and those times were short; only during weekend evenings were they extensive, when she joined him and her uncle for their usual drinks.  Without thinking, she followed her impulse and took it from his head, putting it on hers and adjusting it like a cowboy.

For a moment, she had a flash of hesitation at taking it from him without a word, wondering if she was overstepping her boundaries, but his expression told her she had done nothing wrong when his smile widened and he took his pick out of his mouth so that it could become a grin.

“Say what you will, but I think it looks damn good on you,” he commented with a shrug, trying to make himself look innocent.

“You’re not getting me to wear hats permanently, if that’s what you’re trying to get at.”

“Aw, c’mon.  When in Rome—”

She pointed an accusatory finger at him, putting on her best stern expression.  “No.”

He laughed and she couldn’t help but smile as well, starting to play again just to give her hands something to do while she looked at him, feeling how restless they were getting.  After a moment, she decided to go ahead and ask the question that had been staying with her since her very first week.

“So,” she said, as casually as possible, “you know, the first time you drove me into town, the bartender thought I was your girlfriend.  Said it was because he’d never seen your hat on anyone’s head but yours, so he figured I was special.”

“Ah, that guy,” he said with a small shake of his head, then shrugged.  “He ain’t wrong, in a way, but—what are you gettin’ at?”

“Well, I was just wondering if you’d let a lot of girls wear it.  I mean, it’s totally out of line, probably, but I was curious.  I’m really curious about a lot of stuff.”

“Just the one,” he answered, without hesitation, looking at her with a frank expression.  He didn’t seem bothered at all by her prying, and it reassured her; she didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable when he’d been so welcoming to her all along.  “A long time ago.  And now you.”

She wanted to ask what it meant—the question itched, but it stayed stuck in her throat, and she struck the first chord that her fingers shaped.  “Is that hat special, or something?”

“Yeah, kinda.  Belonged to my dad.  He died...” There was a moment where he trailed off, rubbing a hand over his stubble as he seemed to go back into his memories, calculating; his eyes went far off, but then fell on her again.  “...Almost ten years ago now.  He was a rancher all his life, and he worked like a bull, but then, I guess he got old.  Was workin’ outside one afternoon and his heart just gave out.  He’d built our ranch from nothing before I was born, so I don’t think it was a bad way to go for him.  And I’ve been wearing his hat since I started working here because it was just—keepin’ the spirit, you know?”

Seeing the gentleness in her eyes, he smiled, as if to tell her that he wasn’t having too much of a hard time talking about something that had once been painful.  It was his smile that urged her to ask, yet again—still at the risk of going too far.

“How come you work here, if your family has their own ranch?”

He grimaced.  “Well, my Da had a partner, since he couldn’t get it all started on his own.  We always thought he had the same stance as we did, but it turned out he was just completely in another world.  There was a lot of complicated stuff with the inheritance that I still don’t understand, but then he turned around and turned it into a goddamn dude ranch—you know, for tourists to come work and experience the life for a bit. Ain’t got nothing against people who want to do it, but that’s just...not what our ranch was supposed to be.  It was my home and it got turned into a circus, so I couldn’t stand it and I left.  My Ma, she still lives there, but I could never be happy in a place like that.  So I’m workin’ for a good man with the same values and saving up to have my own ranch one day.  I’ll make it just like my dad’s was.  It won’t be the same piece of land, but it’ll be in his name.”

“That’s really honourable of you,” she said after a moment, resting her chin on her arms again.  “I’m sure you’re gonna get your dream some day.”

He just smiled, leaned his head back against the wall of the bridge, and began strumming his guitar again.  The time they spent after that was short, and soon he had to go back to work; she got out from under the bridge with him and followed as they walked in the direction of the house, speaking little.  She lingered a pace or two behind him, lost in thought, then caught up to give him back his hat.  Once it was back on his head, she put a hand on his back lightly.

“Thanks.”

“What for?” he asked, glancing at her with a look of blatant surprise laced with confusion as she began to walk at his side.

“Hanging out with me.  Sharing that stuff.”

“Oh, well.  Thank you for listenin’.”

She smiled and remained in silence, adjusting the strap of her guitar so that it sat better on her back.  The small talk flowed easily when they were around the other workers, and so did their casual interactions when they had a drink with her uncle in the evening, but she was coming to realize that she found herself at a complete loss when they were alone.  It was unsettling, to say the least; she was used to being in control of herself, to never lose a grip and become as tense as she was with Rygdea.  The most unsettling part, she realized, was that none of it was uncomfortable as she knew feeling like this should be.  Words caught in her throat again when they came to a stop, standing between the house and the barn, and he turned to her to say something—but he couldn’t find the words either.

Her teeth closed on the skin inside her cheek as she looked up at him, shifting her weight from foot to foot.  She pressed her lips together.  “Well, uh.  See you at dinner tonight.”

“Yep,” he nodded.

She punched him on the arm and turned away almost immediately, having to force herself not to run.  Out of all people—she didn’t even punch her _friends_ on the arm.  As she headed back inside the house and to her room, she resisted the urge to hit herself in the face with her guitar.


	5. Chapter 5

“Hey, can I grab a beer?” she asked as she opened the door to the fridge and bent to look inside, putting a hand on the door to steady herself.

“Sure thing,” her uncle answered, sitting down to read the paper.  Due to his schedule of waking early with the rest of his employees for breakfast and then heading straight to work, he never had the time to read it until the day’s work was over; it was after dinner and the sunset glowed soft outside, shining in through the window just above the sink.  The guys had gone back to the other house, and it was quiet. 

She took two bottles from the fridge, holding them by the necks and ready to walk outside, but her uncle’s voice stopped her when she walked by the table.

“Oh, you don’t have to get me one, I’m fine for tonight.”

“Uh—” she started to say awkwardly.  She felt like a kid who’d just gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar.  “I was actually gonna bring it to Rygdea.  He went outside just now.  I just finished that book he recommended and I wanted to go hang out to talk about it.”

“Sure.”

He didn’t sound convinced at all, eyebrow arched as he went back to his paper; she ducked outside quicker than the Road Runner, blowing a puff of air from her cheeks.  She knew exactly what he might have asked if she’d given him the chance—what he might ask in the future if she gave herself away any more.  Hell, even Gadot was starting to ask those questions when she called him in the evenings, just judging by her voice; though her uncle didn’t know her half as well as he did, he wasn’t blind, either.  It was embarrassing to think she probably looked like a schoolgirl with a crush.

She made her way to the paddock, where a few horses were still running freely.  Rygdea was inside, leaning back against the fence with his elbows propped on it, his figure dark against the sunlight.  When she was closer, she could see he had a sprig of wheat between his teeth; the picture he painted made her smile.  With his jeans, his plaid shirt, his hat—he looked like the poster boy for a country movie.

“Didn’t eat enough at dinner, cowboy?” she called to him as she ducked to slip in the spaces of the fence so that she could be on the other side with him.  He only chuckled as she handed him the second bottle in her hands and uncapped hers.  “Hanging out with your buddies?”

“Like always, sweetheart.”

She hopped up to sit on the fence and took a sip of her beer, swinging her feet idly as she looked at the horses, head tilted slightly.  “Horses look really...I don’t know.  Majestic.  At the risk of sounding really cheesy and lame.”

“Ain’t either of those things, so don’t worry,” he said with a small smile, glancing to her.  “I really love takin’ care of all the animals around here, but I gotta admit the horses are just special to me.  Kids like me, we always got more friends that were horses than people.”

“I like dogs.  Never had one, though.”

“Cause of the—” he trailed off, if only not to have to cut himself short, hesitant.  Too careful.

“Oprhanage, yeah.  You can say it, you know.  It’s not Bloody Mary, saying it a certain number of times won’t invoke me bursting into tears or anything.  My childhood wasn’t that terrible.”

He smiled, looking reassured, though he still toyed with the label on his bottle, picking at it with too short nails.  His expression gave her a far-off feeling as he looked at the horses.

“Is it hard sometimes?  I mean, getting attached to horses.  They don’t live as long as people and things are bound to happen, right?” she asked, her voice soft.  She didn’t want to pry too much, or raise subjects that made him uncomfortable; she also knew these were questions she would be better off asking her uncle while bonding, but she was genuinely interested in knowing what he might answer.  She was genuinely interested in _him_.

“Well,” he began to say after a moment, as if piecing together his thoughts when a few answers pushed at each other at the same time.  “Yeah, it’s hard.  No matter how old you are, or what kind of person you are, you just get attached—and then it’s just like losin’ anyone you love.  Sometimes maybe even worse.  Don’t know why, it just can be.  Hardest I ever saw my dad cry was because of a horse, and he was the kinda guy who was all tough and gruff and never cried.”

She watched him take a swig of his beer and said nothing, just observing him carefully.  He seemed to notice exactly what was going on through her head and chuckled.

“You want to know what happened, don’t ya?”

“Only if you’re okay talking about it.  I mean, I do want to know, but I won’t pressure you or anything.  That’d make me a dick.”

“A cute dick,” he said, smiling, though it fell from his face soon after, leaving something more contemplative in the way his lips held the sprig of wheat.  He took a drink, then another, as if to make himself ready—she was about to tell him he didn’t have to when he spoke up again.  “I was—I dunno, maybe fifteen or something?  We were just ridin’ together one afternoon, and my Da’d had his horse since before I was born, so she was getting kind of old, but damn, was she beautiful.  They barely even had to communicate, too, like they just knew what the other was feeling without even needing to look at each other.”

He looked away from the horses, and further away towards the setting sun, crinkling his eyes as he was blinded.  She almost expected him to sneeze; Snow always did when the sun was too bright, and blamed it on his blue eyes. 

“We never saw that many snakes around our ranch because of the area, but there were a few sometimes.  She saw it and got scared, really scared—reared and lost her balance.  It’s a miracle he didn’t get hurt either, cause it was a bad trip, and she broke her back.  Just like that.  And then, she was in so much pain—hell, it was unbearable just to hear her.  There’s usually procedure before you put a horse down to avoid animal cruelty and all, but he made me run back and get his gun.  Would’ve been cruel to make her suffer any more.  So he had to shoot her.”

She watched him as he drank and swallowed with difficulty, the muscles in his jaw working when he gritted his teeth.  All she could do was put a hand on his shoulder and rub his back, frowning.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Nah, it’s fine.  All in the past,” he said with a shake of his head, spitting out the sprig of wheat and trying a small smile.  “Just makes me emotional for a lot of reasons.  Anyway, point proven, right?”

She gave a small nod.  “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry for the downer story.  Well, stories.  Feels like all I’ve been tellin’ ya is the most depressing stuff that’s happened to me.  I actually lived a pretty good life. too.”

“Wouldn’t have expected that,” she said lightly, smiling in an attempt to make the air between them a bit less hesistant, to take everything back to the playfulness she had been used to with him.  To her relief, he chuckled easily, taking a short drink before setting his bottle down on the fence and moving so that he was facing her.

“I don’t know what it is about you that makes me want to open up and talk the way I do.  Did you put some truth serum in my beer, or something?”

“Damn it, I’ve been found out.  I’ll need to eliminate you now.  How hard do you think I’ll have to make one of the horses kick you in the head so that you die?”

“Pretty hard, I hear I’ve got a pretty thick skull,” he said, grinning.  Then, he made sure to look into her eyes to study her expression carefully, and leaned closer to her slowly when she didn’t draw back or look away, showing no sign of discomfort as he put his hands on the fence on each side of her.  “I think I’ve figured out the answer to my question.”

She smiled as casually as she could.  “Yeah?  And what’s that?”

“I think I’m startin’ to really like you.”

“Me too,” she replied after a moment, and her voice couldn’t work as it usually did.  It came out quiet, a little flustered, and it made her want to push him away if only so that she could breathe easier.  But she couldn’t imagine actually doing it and looking at him through so much distance again.

“Is that a sunburn, or are you blushing right now?” he asked just as quietly, smirking.

“Definitely sunburn, since you had me up on freaking horses three feet away from the sun every afternoon for the past million days.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

His voice was quiet and low, and far from playful, teasing or sarcastic this time.  He wasn’t playing anymore.  He leaned closer still, slow, and she found herself leaning the rest of the way, her head bent just slightly, and she could almost feel his lips on hers—

The bottle went crashing down right onto a rock when his hand moved and nudged it off the fence, and he jumped back, swearing.

“Shit,” he muttered, looking more than reluctant as he pulled away from her.  She wanted to reach for his collar and pull him back, but she was frozen to the spot, and he bent to pick up pieces of the shattered bottle.  “God damn it.  I swear I don’t wanna pick it up, I just—the horses might smell it and come check, and we can’t have them eatin’ broken glass, fuck.” 

“I’ll go get a bag,” she said when she finally snapped out of it, and he nodded as she stood up off the fence and jogged back to the house with a quiet curse of her own.  _So close_.

 

* * *

 

She groaned into the phone and Gadot laughed when he could hear the sound of her banging her head on the kitchen table when he picked up.

“It’s a hard life on the ranch,” he greeted, in a horribly fake accent.  It didn’t come even close to Rygdea’s natural drawl, and when she shivered, she told herself it was because of the open window and how cool the air was at night this time of year.

“We almost kissed,” she said, putting a hand in front of her mouth and pulling at her bottom lip.

“ _Almost_ kissed?  What are you, in eighth grade?”  He laughed.  “With you, it’s usually stuff like I almost did a—”

“Shut your face, this stuff happens.  There was an accident.  I’m miserable here.”

“Uhuh.  You gonna try to smooch your cute cowboy again soon?”

“I wish.  It’s so complicated here, with my uncle and the other workers, it’s like there’s people everywhere all the time.  It was a golden opportunity.”

“So have him drive you to town again and pounce on him in the car.  That’s what you’d usually do with any guy you want to nail, right?  What’s stopping you from finding opportunities yourself?  I can hear your lady parts crying from here.”

She dropped her forehead back on the table and groaned again.  “No one past fifteen says lady parts anymore.  And I don’t wanna get all...well, me, with him.  I really like him.  And he likes me too.  He said that, earlier, before the eighth grader almost kiss.”

He whistled.  “Sounds like you’re in deep.  This is new, I don’t know what to say.”

“Me neither,” she sighed.


	6. Chapter 6

Even though it was already past the middle of summer and the nights were getting chillier, a hot front made its way to the ranch as they waited and waited for rain.  The land was getting dry, and the warmth weighed down on even the animals; the employees worked shorter hours, took more breaks, and drank more beer—if only to cool down.  It felt like the flames of hell were licking at their feet, but there was something celebratory, unusual about the way life on the ranch shifted due to the incapacitating weather, and Lebreau enjoyed the change of pace.

(It made everything around Rygdea a little bit less suffocating—at least, most of the time.  Even three days later, she was still beating herself up for how she’d reacted when he’d cooked hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner.  In her defence, he had been shirtless with his hair pulled off his neck in a ridiculously cute bun sitting at the base of his skull, and that made her feel almost woozy, but it didn’t really excuse it.

“Hey, wanna barbecue with me?” he’d called out to her on his way back from feeding the horses, just before dinner.

And she’d replied, thrown off: “Is that a weird country sex innuendo because I—”

“Well, I meant flippin’ burgers on a grill, but if you’re offering...” he’d answered smugly, smirking as he tilted his head with a shrug and looked her up and down, for the first time since she’d started living at the ranch.  She’d drawn back in surprise and frowned deeply, looking just as offended as she seemed when men got too close—and rightly so, he’d quickly realized.

“Way to go, asshole,” she’d said before walking away.

Only a few hours later, he apologized, and so did she, even though he refused to have her apologize for something he was taking responsibility for; she wasn’t sure if it was right to let him, but he did seem genuinely sorry.  Even though she felt like she was the asshole.)

The nights were the worst.  The heat made even sleeping unbearable, even after she had postponed going to bed for as long as possible; her sheets and mattress felt like the walls of a furnace until she was so warm that she left her room and went downstairs for a drink.  Granted, there was barely a finger of whiskey along with as many ice cubes as she could fit into the glass, and she sprawled across the couch holding the glass to her chest, sometimes pressing it to her forehead.

Her eyes closed, she heard the soft creaking of the stairs under careful footsteps, and peeked over with one eye when Rygdea stood at the edge of the living room. 

“Still awake, kiddo?”

“Yeah, it was hard to fall asleep hearing you crying in your room because I beat your ass at poker earlier.”

“For the record,” he started to say, groaning as he let himself fall into the armchair bonelessly, “I’ve been up against all kinds of guys—like, big, burly, scary cowboy thug types.  I’ve beaten and got beat by a good number, but I would’ve never expected the scariest of ‘em to put me to shame would be a twenty-two-year-old girl.”

She chuckled proudly.  “I am pretty ruthless.”

“Yeah, like this heat.  You wanna go for a swim?”

“Uh, where?  In the knee-high stream?”

“No, there’s a natural swimming pond thing just—you never seen it?  It’s a little far to walk, but it’s quick with the horses and they’re probably still awake hating everything like us.”

“Dude,” she said in a low tone, standing up at a speed that surprised him when it was already so tiring to move.  “There’s a place to swim here and no one told me?  What kind of people are you?”

“Barbarians, ‘course.”

He chuckled as he followed her out of the house and to the stables, the fans inside rattling loudly as they whirred.  It was noisy and annoying, but at least it kept the inside somewhat (only somewhat) cool, and more bearable for the horses.

“They’re not sleeping?” she asked, noticing that most of them were awake.

“Well, horses don’t sleep as much as we weak humans do.  They usually need somewhere between two and three hours a day, so during most of the night, they’re just hangin’ out,” he explained as he took out the riding equipment.  He’d shown Lebreau how to saddle and ready the horses, and though he still needed to check everything for safety before going out to ride, it was less work for him, and she was starting to become almost as fast as he was.

“You’re gettin’ better at this,” he said as he tugged on the fastenings where she’d just finished, patting Nora’s neck before heading back to Lindblum.  “You’re all set.”

They led the horses out of the stable and mounted, nearly completely in sync, and Rygdea led the way with Lindblum, lighting their path with a large flashlight.  The air was heavy and the moon big and orange; on colder nights, it might have been clear enough to shine bright, but the light was definitely necessary this time.  He let the horses set the pace, not wanting to rush them, but the pond was close enough that they got to it before she could be melting down on the saddle completely.

“You’ll have to show me the way tomorrow, ‘cause I have no idea where we are right now,” she said, picking up the flashlight when he set it down on the ground and shining it around the area.  All bushes and trees and high, burnt grass.  By the time she was turning back around to flash it at the pond, Rygdea was already pulling his shirt off his back.

“Sure thing.”

She shone the light at him, and then back at their feet quickly when she realized what she was doing, and he smiled.  Of course he’d noticed.

“It’s fine,” he said, shrugging, and he was too smug to her taste.  “You can look, as long as you’re not gonna tell me you’ve gotten modest.”

She scoffed.  He pushed down his sweatpants next, and she thought, at the back of her mind, that it was no wonder he was so warm if he wore a shirt and pants even in this weather.  “You sound like you’re giving me a challenge.”

“I dunno.  Am I?”

As he got into the water, she set down the flashlight, still turned on, and directed the beam at the pond so that they could still see when they were going to be in the water; then, she crossed an arm over the other at the hem of her tank top and started to lift it over her stomach, stopping dead in her tracks and tugging it back down quickly.

“Shit.”

“What’s up?” he asked, running his wet hands over his face and letting himself down into the water until it was up to his chin, then back up to his shoulders.

“I don’t wear a bra to bed.”

“Me neither,” he said with a chuckle, and turned around, his back to her, before she could even ask.  Drops of water glistened on his shoulders in the light.  “Tell me when it’s okay.”

A moment passed as she contemplated her surprise at the gesture, until she shook herself out of it and pulled her tank top over her head, discarding her shorts next.  She waded into the water quickly, relieved that it was at least somewhat cooler than the air, and lowered herself down into it so that it almost covered her mouth.

“It’s fine now,” she said to Rygdea, who turned back around with a small smile.  She kept her eyes on him and blew bubbles into the water.  “Thanks for that.  It was really classy of you.”

He shook his head.  “You shouldn’t have to thank me.  I mean, I’m not twenty anymore, so I’ve sort of caught on that I don’t have to look just because I can.  I respect you, ya know, contrary to what the barbecue incident might’ve led you to think.”

“That was my fault,” she said, moving closer, if only to better see his face in the dark; there was only so much the flashlight could do.  “I shouldn’t have talked to you like that.”

“We’re not going over this again,” he said in a warning tone, and nudged her forehead with his index finger.

She gave a playful pout and blew bubbles into the water again, looking up at him.  Their eyes met.  “Fact of the matter is, I look at you probably a lot more than you look at me, so you shouldn’t have to feel like you always need to take a step back—” 

“Or maybe I’m just more subtle looking than you are,” he said with a small smile.  All she could do was blink like an idiot.  “You’re really pretty, you know.  And spunky.  And mature.  And cute.”

“See, now, I’m never cute.  I’m usually a lot better at handling guys that I like than this.”

He tilted his head as his smile widened, and she watched a drop of water bead at the tip of his hair and fall onto his cheekbone.  Even as she reached out to wipe it away without thinking about it twice, he asked, “You like me?”

“I said so the other day, didn’t I?” she answered, almost gruffly.  To hide her embarrassment, she went lower into the water until her head was completely under, and she just knew he was chortling to himself above her.

But she didn’t expect that he would go underwater as well; her eyes were closed, but his were open as he moved closer, and she felt the brush of his fingers on her collarbone as he reached for her shoulder to steady himself.  His lips were stretched in a smile when they ghosted over her cheek and suddenly her lungs felt too tight, and though she didn’t draw back, she resurfaced and breathed in deep.  Her eyes were trained up towards the sky until she heard him come back up as well, only seconds later, and they stared at each other in silence, so close she could feel her breast graze his skin when she breathed in.

Part of her wanted to say something.  Part of her wanted _him_ to say something.  But the rest of her hoped that the silence remained.  She was frozen as he reached up and pushed away a wet strand of hair from her face with his thumb, her heart pounding; she moved forward towards him, drawn before she could think to ask, and his hands were warm on her face as their lips met.  She tilted her head just slightly, and they fit perfectly, even as a smile tugged at hers when she traced the lines of his arms and he shivered.

She nearly pulled away, but she couldn’t have even if she had wanted to; her lips parted as his hands moved down to her back and the pads of his fingers tickled her spine.  He kissed her slow, steady, in a way that made her heart pound like it never had before—not for a man—and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders to cling to him like she was afraid he would change his mind.

Which did cross her mind, if only in a flash, when he broke the kiss to press his forehead to hers, his breath ending in a disbelieving chuckle.

“Shit, I’m shakin’,” he whispered, as if speaking it too loudly would disturb something in the air.  Then, he sang, still as quiet:  “ _Hey, I’m a little drunk on you, and high on the summertime_.”

Lebreau laughed.  “You just have a song ready for every situation, don’t you?”

“That’s how we country singers are.  Kind of a package deal.”

“I think I’m starting to like it, to be honest,” she answered, unable to restrain the goofy grin on her face.  It was so unlike her, to be excited to the point of losing control of the walls she put up, but it was the same novelty that she’d felt when moving in with Snow and Gadot and going from being best friends to sharing and knowing everything of each other.  She wanted more of the feeling.

“Then maybe I should kiss you again.”

She’d tried to straighten her expression, but when the thought popped into her head, she couldn’t repress her smirk.  “Giddyup, cowboy.” 

He laughed and kissed her, hard enough that she felt even warmer than the summer itself.

 

* * *

 

“Thanks for not calling me for three fuckin’ days, dick,” Gadot said as soon as he picked up, before even bothering with a hello.

“Fuck off,” Lebreau shot back, harshly, fully aware that he could hear the smile in his voice.  Just to give herself something to do, she dipped her finger into the near empty glass of soda in front of her and put it in her mouth to lick it off, teeth catching onto the skin as she fidgeted.  The smile on her face was ridiculous, she knew, as she pulled her finger out to speak.  “I kinda have a boyfriend now.”

Her answer was a loud thumping noise that had her pulling the receiver from her ear as Gadot, on the other end, hit his cell phone to the heel of his palm a few times, as if there was something wrong with his signal.  She rolled her eyes when he came back and kept on playing his disbelief.  “Sorry, my phone’s shit.  You have a bunny train?”

“Stop screwing around, I’m already feeling like a dumb schoolgirl enough.”

“Pfah,” he groaned, switching from playful to wise as quickly as he always did—and then back again.  “There’s nothing embarrassing about being in an adult relationship.  Definitely adult, since the guy is, you know—like, forty, right?”

“He’s not that old, you ass.”

She could hear his smile.  “Yeah, I know, I’m just messing with you.  I’m actually really happy, you know.  I mean, I am a little jealous because I thought I would be the only man for you forever, but you deserve it.  I’ll have to see if he deserves you, though.”

“You know you’re still my man, you big lug,” she answered affectionately.  “What about Snow, though?”

“He’s just our really big dog.”

“I can vouch for that.” 

As they laughed together, she opted not to tell him about her growing frustration over the fact that Rygdea refused to even touch her except for stolen kisses when no one was around out of fear of getting caught.  After nearly an entire summer of his plaid shirts and forearms and dimples and muscles working, after so long just fantasizing about what she thought was out of reach, this was a snail pace for her; and she knew it was only going to last longer.

 

* * *

 

Lebreau was incredibly headstrong and intimidating in her persuasiveness: this was widespread knowledge among those who knew her, mainly her roommates.  And now, she was ready to turn this talent to Rygdea; with her shortest shorts, tightest tank top, and favourite bra (from those she had brought to the ranch, at least), she made sure not to be seen as she walked out of the house at a brisk pace.  Part of her felt like a spy, watching both her openings to go outside without being noticed and Rygdea’s movements—he’d just gone off into the storage barn alone—but part of her felt like a frustrated, silly teenager.  She _was_ frustrated, sure; but the rest, she wasn’t too fond of being.

She crossed the distance to the barn and slipped inside quietly, so much that he didn’t even notice her until she was right behind him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder.  Her fingers brushed the small of his back, tracing the soft, tan skin along his spine, just barely wet with sweat.  The oppressive heat had died down to something more bearable, but out in the sun, it was still hot for the workers.

“Do you ever wear shirts?”

“You sneaky—” he said with a jump, turning around to look at her.  “Didn’t you say you liked my plaid shirts two days ago?  Answers your question.”

“It was a rhetorical question.  I do like your plaid shirts, you look good in them.  Out of them too.”

He chuckled as she kissed him, feeling her smile against his lips, but it was a brief one as she moved down to kiss his jaw, then his neck.  She had a hand on the other side of his face, and her touch was scalding on his skin; he closed his eyes and reveled in the feeling as her lips brushed his Adam’s apple, allowing himself a moment of weakness before wrapping his fingers around her wrist and guiding her hand away from his face.

“Lebreau,” he said softly, keeping the disappointment in his own actions out of his voice.

She pulled back, but didn’t move away from him, sliding her hands to his sides, just over his ribs.  “Everyone’s busy elsewhere, I checked.  We’re not gonna get caught.”

“We still could,” he insisted, touching his fingers to her cheek.  She wanted more than that.  “I don’t wanna risk it.  That’s the last thing I want.”

To keep her lips from shaping a pout, she started to kiss his neck again and trailed her fingertips over his chest, just enough to make him shiver.  His fingers twitched against her shoulder when she darted her tongue out, only barely, in the dip above his collarbone.  “I finished _Of Mice and Men_ and I’m sad.”

“That’s not true.  Chef found it in the freezer and gave it back to me last week.  Did you cry?”

“I won’t disclose that information unless in the presence of my attorney,” she answered, almost dead serious.  “So I lied.  Don’t try to change the subject.”

Once she pushed away the feeling that she was just a desperate little girl next to him, all that remained was that she only grew more daring, starting to kiss down his chest until she was on her knees, the fingers of one hand tracing the skin along his hipbone as the other went for his belt buckle.  This was when he seemed to snap out of it, putting his hands over hers and pushing them away carefully.

“Hey, hey, whoa,” he said, his tone gentle as it was when he spoke to the horses.

When she got to her feet, it was with a rush of frustration, looking at him in a way that almost made him draw back.  “Tell me straight: do you get a kick out of this?  Having a hot young girl pining after you and getting to be in charge of making me try again and again so that I’ll feel silly and just want you to validate me more?  You’ve got me wrong.  I’m not embarrassed or ashamed.  You’re just pissing me off more than usual.”

“No,” he said firmly, letting go of one of her wrists to cup her cheek.  “I’m not that kinda guy and I would never do that to you.  Ever.  I just don’t want it to be like this—all rushed and sneaky.  Not with you.”

“Why not?  I’m not a sixteen-year-old virgin.  It’s not my first time and you don’t need to make me feel special.  I’ve been attracted to you since the day I came here, and now even more since the other night, and I—I like you.  I don’t need anything else.”

For a moment, she wanted to say that just by saying he liked her, kissing her and wanting nothing else or more in return, he had already made her feel special—more than anyone else ever had—but she opted against it.  Something like that, she considered it weakness, and she didn’t want to show that yet just for the sake of honesty.

He closed his eyes briefly with a soft chuckle and a shake of his head.  “I’m the one who needs it to be special.  Call me cheesy, but I do.  That’s how much I like you.”

She let him kiss her temple and stayed close to him, her hands on his sides again—this time, just holding him as he held her.  He pushed a few strands of her hair away from the side of her face and pressed his lips to hers softly, almost chastely.

“You’re way cheesy,” she piped up in a quiet voice when he pulled away.  A laugh rose up to his lips, and a chuckle of her own followed.  “We could go into town, though.  There’s gotta be a motel in that dingy place, right?  We could set a date, say you’re giving me a ride and going to play at the bar.  That romantic enough for you?”

“Nah,” he answered, smiling when her shoulders visibly sagged with disappointment.  “I’m sorry, but that motel is disgusting.  Even here and now would be more romantic than that.”

She couldn’t help but give him a small shove.  “You’re killing me, you know that?”

“Yeah, I’m killin’ me too.”


	7. Chapter 7

It was past three in the morning when the phone rang through the house, loud and shrill and ominous in its timing.  Lebreau woke up after the fifth ring, when it had stirred the others enough so that she could hear her uncle getting out of bed and heading down the stairs to pick it up.  She heard Rygdea next, then the cook, and she was the last to get downstairs into the kitchen.  There was a dark look on her uncle’s face as he spoke into the phone, and it became even darker when his eyes met hers.  Her stomach dropped.

“It’s your friend Gadot,” he said quietly as he handed her the phone, his voice still gravelly from sleep.  She could barely even get her own out.  Gadot, on the other hand, sounded wide awake.

“Breau, it’s—Snow’s been in an accident.  He was on his bike and some fuckass pulled up in front of him.”

“Is he alright?” she asked quickly.  Fear made her dizzy and nauseous; her mind barely worked, and she had gone completely unaware of the fact that she was being watched.  She didn’t even know whose hand was on her shoulder.  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she imagined that it was Gadot, right there with her, and everything else she could think of was Snow, Snow, Snow.  Losing him had never once crossed her mind and now that it finally did, there was no worse horror than the simple thought of it.  She wanted to puke or cry or maybe both.

Even Gadot’s voice was strained as he answered.  “They don’t know yet—they say he’s still unstable, and that even if he does get stable, they won’t be able to tell as long as he’s out.”

“I’m coming over,” she said, closing her eyes.  She didn’t even remember how long it had taken her to drive from home to the ranch.  “I’ll be there in...in—shit, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Listen to me,” he told her firmly, though it did little to mask the emotion in his voice.  “Get someone to drive you.  Please.  Get a cab if you have to, I don’t care how much it costs, I’ll pay, but you can’t drive like this and I couldn’t stand for you to get hurt too.”

“I will.  I promise,” she said quietly before hanging up and putting her face in her hands.  “I need someone to drive me.”

It was obvious that it should be her uncle to him and the cook; he was already grabbing his car keys when Rygdea put a hand on his shoulder, only taking his eyes off Lebreau to look at him.  There was uncertainty in his eyes; he didn’t have the mind to think of an excuse that wouldn’t make it seem like what it exactly was, but in the end, in the moment, it mattered little.

“Boss, can you give me the weekend off?” he asked.  Right.  It was Friday night.  “I’ll drive her.  You still got that meeting with that supplier guy tomorrow, right?  I’m less important.  The guys’ll know what to do without me.”

Her uncle seemed hesitant, but he eventually nodded.  “A’right.  You take good care of her, okay?  That’s my family right there.”

“I will,” Rygdea said seriously.  He followed her back upstairs to get dressed and pack a change of clothes, with the cook not far behind.  She hugged Lebreau on her way back to her room and stroked her face gently; followed by a similar gesture from her uncle on their way out of the house, and some words of comfort that she couldn’t really hear over the noise in her head.  Once they were outside and next to his truck, Rygdea stopped to wipe away the first tear that she couldn’t hold back anymore and pull her into his arms.

“Hey.  It’s okay.  I’m here,” he said softly, tucking his chin over her head as he held her close and rubbed a hand up and down her back gently. 

It was far from okay, but she didn’t contradict him.  It was just comforting to have his arms around her until they got into the car.  As he started the engine, country blared from the speakers, and he quickly turned the volume down until it was barely audible, at least until he had pulled onto the road.  His fingers hovered over the radio’s buttons.

“Do you want me to put something else on?  Or turn it off?”

She made a quiet sound in the back of her throat, wiping her eyes with one sleeve of her oversized sweater, once a possession of Gadot that he had long since grown out of.  When this was all over, she knew she would be left with the embarrassment of crying in front of him when she could count the people who had seen her cry on the fingers of one hand and still be left with some; now, she wished she could feel only this, and she would have welcomed anything that wasn’t fear and worry tugging at her every second.  “The country’s fine.  Turn the sound up a bit.” 

He nodded, obviously surprised, but carried out her wishes.  His hand searched for hers until he could hold on to it tightly, lacing their fingers together.  A man crooned softly with his guitar from the radio, and she stared, albeit blankly, at Rygdea with her head resting on the back of the seat; the music was an even clearer reminder that he was right here with her, which was a good enough comfort, as small as it was.

 

* * *

 

The sun had started to rise in the sky for some time when they got to the hospital and found Gadot, who seemed much calmer than she was and expected him to be; he was playing a game on his phone and had the rim of an empty paper coffee cup between his teeth and Lebreau knew this could only be a good sign, though her heart was still pounding.

“He’s fine,” Gadot said in lieu of a greeting when he stood to face her and Rygdea, arms held out like he was announcing the particularly satisfying results to one of Snow’s fights.  In a way, this was one—the best result she’d ever heard.  “Just a concussion and some broken bones and still as stupid as ever.”

Like clockwork, he was ready to catch Lebreau as she practically jumped into his arms with joy, his arm falling around her shoulder as the emotion of the situation finally came down from its longest peak and he held the other hand out to Rygdea.

“Gadot.”

“Rygdea.  How do you do,” he said, shaking his hand.  His looked like a teenage boy’s in comparison.

Gadot made a face, smirking.  “Ugh, so Southern.”

“Where’s Serah, anyway?  She with him?” Lebreau asked almost immediately to cut him short, and Rygdea didn’t miss the way she elbowed him in the ribs—if only because she had to bring it so far up with the height difference.

“She went to visit her sister in the city and I haven’t been able to reach either of them yet.  Probably got both their phones turned off since it’s still pretty early—and anyway, it’s not like it’s urgent anymore.  You’re the most important anyway,” Gadot answered, reaching up with the hand that was on her shoulder to touch the top of her head from the side.

She snorted.  “Tell that to him.”

Rygdea was watching their interaction quietly with a small smile on his face, though she could sense discomfort from it; she parted from Gadot and moved so that she was closer to him.

“Are we allowed to go see him?”

“Yeah, I told ‘em we were siblings so it wouldn’t cause any problems.  Our imaginary mom branched out to some colour when she got bored,” he answered with a wink, gesturing to himself as he started to walk towards Snow’s room.  “Actually, none of us got the same dad.  Free spirit, y’know.  So you take after her.”

Rygdea arched an eyebrow as he looked over to Lebreau with a small smile.  “That so?”

“Shouldn’t have said that,” Gadot muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I ain’t sayin’ anything.”

Lebreau let out a short, awkward laugh, feeling sandwiched between the two of them; between the ease of her banter with Gadot and the novelty with Rygdea when they only knew of each other what they had showed.  She let out a breath that puffed out her cheeks as they reached Snow’s room and she caught a glimpse of him through the door, slightly ajar, and was about to go inside when Gadot laid a heavy hand on Rygdea’s shoulder.

“Oh, not you, man.  We’re going to get coffee, you and me.  Must be exhausted after that drive.”

Rygdea blinked and gave him a look of mild surprise and looked to her, as if waiting for her reaction, and only found neutrality; with a shrug, he followed after Gadot, though not without looking over his shoulder to glance at Lebreau.  She watched them leave until they turned at the end of the hallway, then pushed the door open, smiling at the view of an injured Snow heartily eating Jell-O.  Every visible inch of his skin was scratched, bruised or bandaged, his left arm in both a cast and a sling, but he seemed just as well as ever—when he saw her, his face lit up, and he pulled the spoon out of his mouth to smile at her.

“Hey, you made it!”

All Lebreau could do was shake her head and cross the floor to his bed quickly, pulling him into an awkwardly positioned but incredibly tight hug until he groaned, lifting his good hand to pat her back.

“You can’t hug me harder than my painkillers are working, you know,” he said, grinning when she pulled back and gave him a harsh look.

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

“Isn’t that what you said the last time I was in here?” he asked.  She watched him scoop up as much jelly as he could get onto the small plastic spoon and ducked her head to eat it just as he lifted it before dropping onto the chair next to the bed with a smug smile at his desolated expression.  “Hey!”

“Is that all they feed you here, anyway?”

“Nah, I got breakfast just before you got there, but I dazzled the nurse into giving me extra because I’m a big boy.  Luckily for me it’s not every girl in the world that’s immune to my puppy eyes like you are.”

“That’s because your puppy eyes are shit,” she shot back easily, leaning forward to rest her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand with a small smile.  “I’m really glad you’re okay.  You scared me to death.”

Snow’s eyes softened and he held his hand out to her.  It was a foreign gesture, even more so when she slipped her hand in his, but it seemed that maybe he read her better than she thought, somewhere near as well as Gadot did; if she said she had been scared to death, it was genuine, and Snow had always been about gestures and words together, never one without the other.  “I’m not going anywhere.  At least not until I meet that unicorn who managed to make you say the word boyfriend.”

She scoffed.  “Are you and Gadot ever gonna let that go?  It’s not like all the guys who have asked me into a relationship haven’t been heard of since then.”

“Maybe not, but close,” he said smartly.  “The way you tell all of ‘em no is pretty scary.” 

She made a childishly displeased noise at the back of her throat and kept on holding his hand.

 

* * *

 

Rygdea peered over the lid of his coffee cup at Gadot as he sat facing him and set down his own coffee, pushing a muffin across the table towards him.  He was imposing, and even a little bit intimidating to Rygdea, but the peace offering helped him release some tension from his shoulders as he dug through the packaging and took a bite.  Still, it was easy to see how much he cared about Lebreau just by seeing the look on his face when he spoke to her; if he was anything as protective as Rygdea knew he would have been, he had every right to be wary of him.

“So,” Gadot said, leaning back in his chair and taking a sip of his coffee.  His tone was that of someone who didn’t actually have anything to say and only wanted to break the silence, but it was clear that he was going somewhere.  “How’d it happen?”

“I ain’t following you.”

“I mean, we’re both guys here, and I know how she is.  She’s passionate about everything she does, and that includes guys.  Pretty literally.  So it had to start somewhere—and for her it’s not usually in the same order that people do relationships.”

“You mean sex?” Rygdea asked, squinting at him in confusion.  Gadot laughed heartily after the few seconds it took for him to realize the question was genuine, and he chuckled in return as he rubbed his eyes.  “Yeah, you have a big laugh, I’ve been drivin’ since 3 A.M.  The answer to your inappropriate question isn’t what you were expectin’: nothing’s happened.  We’ve just been into each other for a while, then we had a moment, and we had an awkward talk where I told her I wanted her to be my girl and she said okay and that’s that.”

Gadot looked absolutely stunned.  “You haven’t had sex?”

“Man, look, you’re cool and I get that you’re close—but seriously?  Mind your damn business,” Rygdea answered, his tone polite but firm enough that Gadot would get the message.  “Do I go around askin’ you about your sex life?”

Realizing he’d crossed some boundaries without even noticing or intending to, Gadot made an awkward, apologetic grimace and held up his hand to show his good intentions, running the other down his face.  His discomfort seemed genuine, but Rygdea still couldn’t help but feel ticked off by how strongly he had come on.

“Sorry, that was way worse than I wanted it to sound.  Totally crass and I’m sorry.  I mean, you guys live with her uncle who’s also your boss and, yeah, big mess alert,” Gadot said quickly, which was unusual for him; had she been with them, Lebreau would have been surprised.  “But that’s it, right?”

Rygdea sighed.  “Yeah, of course.”

“Well, there’s no one at our place right now.  Knowing her, the last few hours have probably been a huge strain on her, so just—help her relax, yeah?  And I’m not insinuating anything this time.  If you can get her to sleep, that’d be great.”

“I’ll take care of her.”

Gadot nodded with a small smile as he sat back in hair chair, and by then, Rygdea had finished both his coffee and his muffin; they both rose with little more than matching nods, and he headed straight for the nearest trashcan, but was stopped by a large, heavy hand on his shoulder.  It was still mildly terrifying, for someone as big as Gadot to be holding him there and looking down at him, and to know what he was surely about to say.

“If you ever hurt her, it’ll be the last thing you do before learning how to walk again.”

Rygdea could only nod at that.  “Well, that’s uh, colourful.  Good thing I don’t intend to.”

“Great!” he then said cheerfully, clapping him on both shoulders.  “I think I like you.”

It was as good a blessing as he knew he could get. 

They walked back to Snow’s room side by side and in silence, and stood in the doorway as if both afraid to break a fragile balance when they saw Lebreau sitting quietly by his bed, her small hand tucked in his as he had nodded off.  He seemed absolutely peaceful with her by his side, though his sleep was light: his eyes fluttered open as soon as Gadot cleared his throat and gave Rygdea a small shove forward into the room.

“I say the two lovebirds can be dismissed,” he said to Snow, who gave a small nod, though it was clear he was giving Rygdea a good once-over.  Lebreau’s hand slipped away and back into her lap as she twisted sideways to look back at them.

“Are you sure?  You’ve been here all night, it should be you—”

“I wasn’t driving and I spent half the night dozing off around here.  He needs someone to hang out with him or he’ll go lonely, besides, and there’s only one chair in here.”

Snow waved his good hand dismissively, as best as he could.  “I’m fine with Gadot, you guys go ahead and get some sleep.  Me and uh—Rygdea, right?—we’ll get acquainted later.”

“Yeah,” Rygdea said, chuckling and returning Snow’s gesture when he saluted to him.  He slipped a hand into his pocket, feeling too many eyes and too much protective bulk focused on him, and his hand found Lebreau’s back.  “Let’s go, darlin’.”

Lebreau made a face.  “Fine, if my best friends are throwing me out already.” 

“We are,” Gadot answered quickly and with a small smile, taking her place in the chair and waving as soon as she had stood.  “See ya later!”

 

* * *

 

A few minutes passed in silence as Rygdea drove, the only words exchanged being a few directions towards Lebreau’s building—now that she finally gave her mind the time to rest, it felt as if the weight of the last few hours was pressing down on her, completely shutting it off.  As she glanced out the window at her side, she could see the sea in the distance, straightening up in her seat to better see it, and already she felt invigorated, if only a little; Rygdea hummed along to a song that came on the radio as he spared a glance at her, cutting himself short to speak.

“Hey, did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That clicking sound,” he said, gesturing vaguely—enough so that she had no idea where he thought it seemed to come from.  “You don’t hear it?”

She gave a small smile.  “Are you sure you’re okay driving?  You’re so tired you’re hallucinating.”

“Ain’t nobody gonna drive my truck but me,” he grinned.  “Nice try, though.”

She chuckled and he didn’t mention the clicking again until a few minutes later; she went quiet and tried to listen out for it, but still heard nothing unusual, even though he insisted he heard something.  They were nearing the beach and he pulled into the elevated parking lot just before the edge of the shore, looking out to the sea.  It was nearly empty, but he still parked in reverse as if to give himself space to leave in a tight spot; she undid her seatbelt, wanting to get out to see the sea, but he extended his hand towards her to stop her as he slid out of his seat.

“No need, I’ll be just a sec,” he said, taking something from behind her seat, though she didn’t see what.  She tried to twist her neck to look outside, but it was only uncomfortable, and she was stuck sitting back and watching him pop the hood, then disappear behind it.

A few seconds passed, then he reappeared, circling to the back and coming back soon after to open her door.

“Mind comin’ out and giving me a hand?” he asked, holding out his hand to help her out, though they both knew full well that she didn’t need it.  Still, she smiled and took it, hopping out of the car and leaning against him when he wrapped his arm around her and led her to the front.  There wasn’t a single unusual thing wrong under the hood.  “See the problem?”

“Not even a little bit.”

He nodded and closed the hood.  “Me neither.”

“So you’re gonna admit that you were just hearing things?” she asked, but he shook his head and walked back to the driver’s door, taking the keys and locking the doors.  Even though she gave him a questioning look, he said nothing, and she finally understood when she saw the blankets laid out on the box, bunched up against the rear of the car.  She couldn’t help the silly smile that stretched her lips a little too wide to her own taste.  “You did that?”

“Well, you’re a seaside girl and you’ve had a rough few hours.  Thought maybe it’d do you good,” he explained with a fond smile, his head tilted to the side just slightly.  “After you, ma’am.”

She climbed into the box and they huddled up against the back of the car together, his arm around her shoulders again as she leaned against him, using his shoulder as a pillow; she breathed in the fresh, salty air and the scent of his cologne and relaxed completely.  When she moved her head down, just slightly, she could hear his heartbeat steady against his chest, if only faintly, and without even noticing, timed her breathing with his.

“Thanks,” she said softly, looking up at him.

He bent his head down to kiss her, first on the lips, then her temple.  “No thanks needed, sweetheart.”

She hummed in answer and shifted even more comfortably against him, moving an arm across his stomach.  A yawn escaped her before she realized and her eyes welled up, causing her to blink several times—then, she remembered she didn’t have to fight to stay awake anymore, and she closed her eyes with the vision of the sea burnt bright behind them.

“Would you mind if I asked you to sing something?  Anything,” she said quietly, not bothering to open her eyes.  His hand moved up to stroke her hair.

“’Course not.”

He lapsed into silence again as he set on choosing something, then sang quietly, his voice more soothing than even the soft melody.

_I remember that day when our eyes first met_   
_You ran into the building to get out of the rain ‘cause you were soaking wet_   
_And as I held the door, you wanted to know my name_   
_Timing is everything_

She dozed off quickly against him, only to wake up some time later to a full beach, the cries of seagulls and laughing children, and the sun in her face.  When she stirred and tried to stretch the arm that was under him, he stirred awake as well, pressing the heel of his palm to his eyes as he sat up.

“I’m hungry,” he said almost immediately, through a groggy voice.  As soon as he spoke up, she was already halfway out of the box, her stomach rumbling.  It was as good an answer as any, and he headed out after her, picking up the blankets and putting them back behind the passenger seat once they were inside.  “Where do you wanna go?” 

“I know just the place.”

 

* * *

 

“This thing is amazing,” Rygdea said, his expression one of pure amazement as he took another bite of his crêpe.  They were only a block from Lebreau’s building, and still he’d insisted on parking down the street from the stand where they had bought the food for the experience.  She kicked her legs from where she was sitting next to him at the edge of the box, taking even larger bites than him.  “You even tastin’ that?”

She took a moment to swallow and lick cream cheese off her thumb.  “Gadot didn’t buy _me_ a muffin.” 

What she expected was for him to laugh, not kiss her neck.  And in that moment, she wanted to be home more than she ever had since she had left for the ranch.

 

* * *

 

When the door closed behind them, she didn’t give him the time to get a look at the apartment—under the excuse that there was nothing to see in a studio—wrapping her arms around him and kissing him the way she had always wanted to.  They were alone, for the first time, completely alone, and she kissed him breathless now that there was no reason for him to catch it in a rush.  His hands were warm on each side of her neck and he anchored himself at her feet until their lips parted; when he put his forehead to hers, something lifted off her shoulders, and she could only feel her heartbeat pound against her ribcage harder than it had the first time he had kissed her.

“Can I take a shower?  Real quick?” he asked.

She couldn’t help but make a small sound of dissent at the back of her throat, though she smiled and gave a small nod.  “Sure.  We have spare towels and toothbrushes under the sink.  Bathroom’s right there.”

Even as she pointed towards the bathroom, he kept looking at her, one eyebrow raised.  “Not comin’ with me?”

“Maybe later,” she answered, kissing him again before speaking under her breath teasingly.  “Don’t be too anxious to get a free show, cowboy.”

He chuckled.  “Says you.”

“I have my reasons.  Now go, before I change my mind and keep you.”

It was actually difficult for him to pull himself away from her, fingers brushing her wrist before his hand slipped from hers and he made his way to the bathroom with a look over his shoulder.  The smile on his lips that widened up to his eyes spoke the same as she was thinking.  As soon as the door to the bathroom closed, she sprinted up the stairs to the balcony-like elevated platform that served as her open-ended bedroom; Snow and Gadot slept in bunk beds across from the front door, just like they had in the orphanage.

She fluffed the pillows on her bed, drew back the covers and made sure they were relatively clean—good enough—then stripped down, picking up a box from under her bed and changing into the bra and panties she kept there.  They matched, and were her most expensive, sexiest pair; all black lace and less fabric than she’d usually wear, the kind that she didn’t want to get mixed up with the rest of her laundry lest she wear them out.  For a moment, she contemplated staying as is, but she opted to put her clothes back on, just in case—and hoped that they would prove unnecessary.

Growing restless, Lebreau sat on her bed, tapped her fingers to her knee in an erratic beat, stood up, then sat back down; she heard the water stop and stood again, suddenly wondering whether she should open a bottle of wine, but the door to the bathroom opened before she could go back down the stairs.

“Lebreau?” Rygdea called, clearly looking for her.  She had to chuckle at that; a space so small, and he’d already lost her in it.

“Up here,” she called back, her eyes catching on the underwear she had previously been wearing on the floor and the box still on her bed.  She kicked everything under it just as Rygdea came up the stairs, smiling at him.  He wore nothing but a towel and held on to it with one hand, and once she was close enough, she could see droplets of water still glistening on his skin—she was almost certain he’d done all of it on purpose.

“Oh, this is nice,” he said, looking around her living area.  “Small place like that for three people, though, don’t you get tired of bein’ all up in each other’s space?”

“Not really, it’s more than we ever had when we were kids.  I actually had never slept alone in my own room until I came to the ranch.  We’ve been saving up, though.  Probably gonna get a place with real bedrooms soon, since we’re getting older now.  And into relationships.”

“Yeah, poor Gadot locking himself out for you.”

She chuckled and then waved a hand, pushing away the subject of her friends so that she could gesture to all of him.  “Aren’t you cold?”

“I forgot my spare clothes in the truck and I wasn’t sure if I would even need them, so I made an executive decision on the towel,” he said, his smile lopsided in playfulness.  He took a few steps closer to her and his hand slid over the side of her hip.  “Maybe you can keep me warm?”

“Your horses have better game than you,” she laughed, taking his chin to pull him into a kiss.

Everything seemed to slow as he kissed her back, and she felt on his lips the same urgency that animated her, but it was without haste; they had the moment all to themselves, however long or however short it would be.  He hooked his hands beneath her knees and pulled her up off her feet, making her let out a short yelp of surprise as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and smiled.  When he set her down on her bed, she held onto his arms to keep him from distancing himself, instead pulling him over her and running her hands down his back.

His lips were needy on hers, his hands warm; he pushed her shirt up over her stomach, palms flat, as he kissed down her neck and his thumb found the spot on her ribs just below the underwire of her bra that made her shiver when it brushed her skin.

“I hope you never doubted that I wanted you,” he whispered, voice too thick to be louder.  His eyes met hers, clear and focused with longing.

“I did, once or twice when I got really frustrated.  Not anymore.”

The corners of his mouth curved up, if only slightly, and he pushed her shirt the rest of the way up, hands sliding up over her arms to help her take it off.  They found her thighs next, fingers splayed as he pressed a kiss to the spot where his thumb had been, then slid up to undo the button of her jeans and pull them all the way down along with her panties.  She lifted her hips and propped herself up on her elbows, a strained laugh escaping her lips when she struggled to undo the clasps of her bra until his hands came around her and settled at the small of her back to help her keep her balance.

His gaze was heavy with admiration, an expression not unfamiliar to her in this situation, but somehow, the way he wore it made her skin burn more than anyone else ever had before.  “Fuck.”

“Thanks,” she managed to say playfully, pulling him into a kiss.  He moved so that he had a knee on each side of her and it was her turn to let her hands roam down over his body—though his touch never left hers—until she reached the towel, her fingers hooking into it and pulling it off with a growing smirk.  His skin was paler past the line of where he wore the waistband of his jeans, his torso tanned from the sun, and she ran her fingers along it until her eyes caught a scar on his thigh.  The skin there was even paler, broken and then patched up long ago; it was big, nearly ten centimeters long, and irregular.  He kissed her neck and slid a hand over her breast as she touched the tips of her fingers to the scar, intrigued, but—

Another time.

She flipped them over so that she was on top of him and straddling his hips, meeting his eyes and sharing a devilish smile with him before covering her body with hers.  She kissed him long and hard and put her hands on his chest for support when she pulled away and sat up. 

Her breath was short, her skin tingled, and her heart was racing like never before.

 

* * *

 

Rygdea sat on the floor with his back to the mattress, between Lebreau’s legs, one hand over her ankle as she braided his usual ponytail.  Her skin was ticklish at first, but after a while, his gentle touch became familiar and his fingers trailing over it barely made her foot twitch anymore.  There was a goofy smile on her face that she couldn’t wipe off no matter how hard she tried; she hummed the tune to a country song she didn’t know the lyrics to and he harmonized with her.

“I’ve never really done this before,” she admitted, cutting her thoughts short after a moment of contemplating whether or not she should.  “I mean, sitting around after sex.  Having sweet moments.”

“No?” he asked curiously, tipping his head back to look at her; she dropped a strand of his hair and the braid unraveled, causing her to click her tongue.  He took that opportunity to turn his head and kiss her ankle.

She chided him gently, though there was no real discontent in her voice.  “Now I have to start over.”

“Does that mean you ain’t never got a boyfriend?”

“I guess not,” she said with a small frown, actually stopping to consider it.  “For me it’s always been fall asleep or go take a shower and then leave, or watching them leave.”

The braid slipped from her hands as he got to his feet and sat down on the bed, wrapping an arm around her and kissing her temple.  When he backed up until he was sitting with his back to the wall, she settled back against his chest easily, his arms coming about her easily, as if it was their natural state, to be fitting against each other like pieces of a puzzle.  Part of her feared he would pity her, but the sympathy didn’t come.

He simply said, matter-of-fact: “So I’m your first real boyfriend.”

“Yeah, looks like it,” she said with a nod, tracing the scar on his thigh.  Now that she could get a proper look at it, with his legs on each side of her, it was even more fascinating to her.  She wanted to hear the story, but there was another question that was pressing to her at the moment.  “What about you?  You said there was only one other girl who wore your hat, right?”

“You got a good memory.  Yeah, there was that girl.  I mean, there were a few others, but she was the real serious one.”

“What happened to her?”

“She’s dead,” he said, in a way that made it sound like he was stating that it was raining—to her ears, it betrayed a desperate need to have it seem like it affected him less than it actually did.  She turned until she was sideways, her shoulder against his, and could look up at him.

“I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head.  “It’s fine.  And before you think I might still be with her if she was still here, I wouldn’t.  She broke up with me a few months before that.  I was just twenty-two and I really thought I could spend the rest of my life with her, but man, that was dumb—she was fifteen years older than me.  Fucked me up real good, too.  I haven’t been in a relationship since then.  Well, ‘til now.”

“Fifteen years?” she repeated, both of her eyebrows shooting up in astonishment as she drew back even more to better look at him.  “Aren’t you overcompensating with me a little?”

He had to laugh at that.  “I’m not compensating for anything.  She just gave me the time and the space to realize what I really needed.  I know you’re younger than me, but you’re more mature and stable than she ever was; ain’t got nothing to do with age, if you ask me.  I couldn’t have made her happy no matter how hard I tried, and we loved each other for all the wrong reasons.  She needed to feel special, needed, validated—of course a twenty-year-old would do that for her.  We weren’t honest with ourselves.  For me, that’s changed.”

She gave an understanding nod and settled back against him, resting her head on his shoulder and wrapping an arm around him.  His hand came up to pet her hair gently, but absent-mindedly; she figured he was thinking back to his past, getting lost in old memories.  There were words on his tongue that wouldn’t make it out, and instead, he kissed her temple.  She understood he wanted to move on to something else, and her fingers found the scar on his thigh.

“How’d you get that?”

“It’s a really silly story, actually,” he said, tone light like he’d completely forgotten what they had just been talking about.  His hand covered hers as she kept on tracing it.  “When I was a kid, my dad bought these blackboards to do inventory—lotsa stuff to keep track of on a ranch.  He was gonna put them up in the equipment shack, but he didn’t have the right screws to put ‘em up on the wall, so they were just on the floor for a while.  I was maybe eight or somethin’?  And I fell when I lifted something too heavy and lost my balance.  Busted my thigh right open on the corner of the chalk tray.”

She chuckled.  “Wouldn’t have pegged you for the clumsy type.”

“I ain’t!  It was just the one time!” 

“I’m sure,” she answered fondly, kissing the corner of his mouth.

 

* * *

 

“I’m hungry,” Lebreau said after a long yawn, stretched out across her bed.  Her hands were above her head, she could touch Rygdea’s fingers if she moved her right hand, and she had one leg across his.  She hadn’t felt this exhausted by spending all her time in bed in a very long time.  “And thirsty.  And I probably really need a shower.”

Yawns were contagious.  If anything, Rygdea looked even limper than she did; vaguely, she could recall him chuckling that he wasn’t twenty anymore when they took a nap break.  “Me too.  To all of that.”

She managed to push herself to sit up and get off her bed, looking for her panties and finding them on the floor on the other side of the bed, next to his shirt, which she shrugged on but didn’t bother to button.  He watched through tired eyes, but the picture she painted drew a lazy, wolfish smile across his lips, which was enough to have him sit up as well, searching for his boxers as she headed down to the kitchen.

“Are eggs okay?” she called out with her head halfway into the fridge.  He found his boxers between one of the pillows and the wall.

“Anything you make is perfect,” he called back, smiling again as he noticed her phone on the nightstand.  He picked it up and took the time to fiddle with the environment—feeling like a perfect idiot for how new and hard it was to him—until he found the camera setting, creeping downstairs as she started cracking eggs and beating them.

Keeping the phone vertical, he was quiet as he framed her and then snapped a photo, smiling down at it; she looked over to him when she noticed him being there but staying silent and raised an eyebrow.

“Did you just take a picture?”

“Yeah.  Look at that tummy,” he said, showing her the phone.  Her hair was a hot mess, but there was a peaceful smile on her lips, and the unbuttoned shirt gave her tan stomach and the curve of her breasts a seductive look that she didn’t hate.  His smile was wide as he looked at it again.  “Can we print this thing?”

The egg mixture sizzled as she poured it into a pan, going quiet again as she added a few slices of cheese and started to stir.  She shrugged and tilted her head to the side.

“Yeah, we can do that after we’re done eating.  You sure you want to bring that back to the ranch, though?  It could raise hell if someone stumbled onto it,” she pointed out, and then regretted it at his expression when she glanced back to him.  He looked like a kicked puppy.

“Guess you’re right.  I still have a few places I could hide it, though.  I was fifteen and living with my mom once,” he chuckled, trailing a hand across the small of her back before his voice softened.  “I don’t mind takin’ the chance.  I mean, I know I’m gonna miss you when you go back home, so—”

Her fingers tightened around the handle of the pan, her hand stilling for a short moment, and she took the pan off the heat to turn around and look at him.  She had been thinking about it too—how she had only come to the ranch for the summer and would be leaving in a few weeks, and how she didn’t know how to go about leaving him behind, not being able to see him every day.  It was already hard enough to try and understand the novelty of what she felt for him.  “Let’s not talk about that now.”

“I’m totally killin’ the mood,” he agreed, chuckling and kissing her temple from behind as he put his hands on her hips.  “You go sit down and tell me what to do.  No more workin’ for you.  Hell, Gadot would probably punch me for letting you cook.”

“Gadot would also be overprotective and overdramatic if he did.  It’s not like I’m the one who was in an accident, and besides, cooking isn’t work to me—”

Rygdea gave her a pointed look and steered her away from the stove and towards the table, completely shutting out her protests until she was sitting down with her chin in her hand and otherwise unmoving.  There was little to her meal that was left to do, and he found himself empty-handed once he had spread the scrambled eggs on pieces of toast and placed them on plates as Lebreau instructed.

“Is that it?”

“Well, it’s not my fault that I was more than halfway done when you decided to help,” she said, teasing.  “I was going to make some asparagus to go with it, but literally the only vegetable in the fridge right now is a pretty suspicious-looking cucumber that I think has been there since before I left.  Snow and Gadot aren’t exactly the veggie type.”

Rygdea chuckled again and sat down with her, already reaching for one of the pieces of toast.  “I s’pose that would cut down the number of steps by a few.”

They ate in near silence, only speaking up to talk about the taste; they were both hungrier than they thought and cleared their plates in a matter of minutes, which only led to them falling into grogginess once they were done.  Lebreau yawned into her hand and stood, taking the plates into the sink but not washing them.  Instead, she headed back to where Rygdea was sitting, standing behind him and leaning forward to run her hands down his chest, arms resting on his shoulders, and tuck her chin over his head.

“I think I’m gonna take a shower, change the sheets and go to bed.”

“Me too,” he said, standing up and turning around to pull her into his arms and kiss her.  “Or we could just stay standing there and not move until we die.”

She chuckled.  “That sounds lovely, but I’m stinky.  Do you mind if I call Gadot and tell him to come back and sleep here?  I don’t want him to get neck problems from sleeping on chairs all day if we’re going to be sleeping too.”

“Sure, this is his place too,” he said and kissed her on the cheek.  “I’ll go change the sheets while you make that call and then we can climb into the shower.  Just show me where the stuff is.”

“Only if you let me keep that shirt.”

“But I like that shirt,” he said in a childish tone, grinning.  She pouted.

“But it’s soft and it smells like you.  You’re gonna have that picture when I go home, I should get something nice too.  Please?”

He winked at her.  “Of course, darlin’.  You know I got plenty of those.” 

As she watched him walk up to her bed with an armful of blankets, she found herself wishing—as silly as it made her feel—that these moments alone together would never end.

 

* * *

 

They spent the whole of the next day by each other’s side at all times but for a few moments—one of them being when Snow came back from the hospital and asked for a Guy Talk with Rygdea that lasted fifteen minutes and left him looking especially pale—and grew even more inseparable as the end of the afternoon neared.  Gadot cleared his throat loudly when they announced their departure and were still standing by the front door a few minutes later, kissing in each other’s arms.

“You guys do know you’re leaving together, right?” Snow called from the couch.  The painkillers somehow made him even more obnoxious than ever.

Lebreau reluctantly pulled away to look at him.  “We’re making the most of the time we have left not sneaking around and running the risk of getting caught.”

“So why don’t you just come out and tell people that you’re together?  It’s not like the only interest you have in each other is bumping uglies; you’re dating, and Lebreau’s young, but she’s still legal,” Gadot said and dropped down on the couch next to Snow, giving his shoulder a hard pat that had him groaning in pain and holding onto his broken arm.

“It still isn’t in my job description to ‘bump uglies’ with my boss’s niece, though,” Rygdea answered, scratching the back of his neck.  “Ain’t too professional.”

“You scoop up horse shit, though,” Snow blurted out.  Lebreau glared at him with terrifying intensity and Gadot kicked his foot; Rygdea only laughed without a shadow of anger.  “What?  I’m on painkillers!”

“It’s a’right, I’ve done it back in the day.  You gotta start somewhere, and I wouldn’t trade my life for yours.  I’d go madder than a wet hen.”

Lebreau rubbed his back and pressed her forehead to his shoulder to hide her laugh when Gadot and Snow both stared at him, completely confused, and even slightly judgemental.  Rygdea snorted and rubbed her back in return.

“You kids are hopeless.  Time to go back to people who speak my language,” he said with an air of finality and reached for the door handle, which Lebreau took as a signal to go over to the couch and say goodbye to her friends; a slap upside Gadot’s head and a kiss on Snow’s, if only because of the concussion.

“You’re back in a few weeks, right?” Gadot asked.

She nodded, noticing the uncomfortable look on Rygdea’s face.  “Yeah.”

“Have fun rolling in the hay,” Snow said without tearing his eyes from the television.  It seemed to loosen Rygdea up, making him laugh as he and Lebreau left the apartment.  As soon as the door closed behind them, they were at each other’s lips again, near desperation, and only headed out when Lebreau had the guts to pull away.

“We should stop on the way,” she said softly, smirking as she nipped at his chin.  “Park into some field when it’s dark, lay out the blankets again.  Make the most of the alone time we have left.”

He hummed pleasantly, snaking a hand along the back of her neck and kissing her again.  “That sounds amazing.  Like we could also get arrested, but still amazing.  You’re gonna make me risk it, aren’t you?” 

“Absolutely,” she chuckled.  She slipped her hand in his and they walked back to his truck together.

 

* * *

 

“Can I ask you somethin’?” he asked carefully, in a tone that had Lebreau knowing he was about to walk on eggshells.  Either that, or he was already afraid of the answer to the question he hadn’t even asked yet—she hummed in answer, urging him to go ahead.  “Do you feel that I treat you like a possession?  Or anything less than what you are?”

She frowned, completely puzzled.  “Not even a little bit.  What makes you think I would?”

“It’s just, your friends seemed to have gotten the idea into their heads that I don’t value you right ‘cause I told Gadot you were my girl.  I mean, I told Snow what I meant when he confronted me earlier, but I wanted to make sure with you.  I care a hell of a lot more about how you feel than what they think.”

“Well, I think they’re a bit more overprotective than usual because they saw I actually have feelings in the game, for once.”  Though she tried to bow her head and hide her silly smile, there was no hiding it from her voice; Rygdea noticed it when she spoke up and smiled as well.  “You referred to me as your girl to Gadot?”

“Yeah, I did.  And I wouldn’t mean it in a she-belongs-to-me way, just—you’re the girl for me, the one I care about, and I’m only glad you chose me as the guy who gets to call you that.  I sure ain’t gonna take that for granted.” 

Lebreau realized, then, that she had something she had never searched for—if only because she had once thought she would never be able to find it.  It felt like her breath wasn’t enough to fill her lungs though something swelled within her until she thought it would be too much, and just when she did, Rygdea was there, by her side, to make the wave crash on the shore, steady and sure as the current.  She held onto his hand and laughed.


	8. Chapter 8

As the summer neared its very end and Lebreau was preparing to return home, her uncle came back from town on one of his regular visits and pulled Rygdea from his work in the middle of the afternoon to take him up to his office, saying they needed to have a talk.  When the door closed behind them, fear took her along with the certainty that he knew, somehow—it had her pacing the floor of her room until she heard the both of them come out.  Just as she started to go down the stairs, Rygdea went up, and he crossed her with a wide, excited smile and no explanation other than a kiss on the forehead before heading up to his own room.  For a moment, she was stunned with confusion, but she went on her way until she found her uncle, also smiling, in the kitchen.

“What’s with him?” she asked, pointing over her shoulder in the general direction of the stairs with her thumb.  “Did you give him a raise, or something?”

“Better.  The owner of the neighbouring ranch wants to sell because he’s moving to a home in the city, and he told me he wanted to personally ask Rygdea to make the first offer before he officially puts it on sale.  The kid’s got a good head on his shoulders and everyone who knows him knows for sure that when he has his own ranch, he’s gonna run it the way it should be run.  Gave him the afternoon off so he can go to the bank and get his stuff together.”

“That’s amazing!  Isn’t it gonna be hard to lost your best employee, though?”

“Yeah, of course—ain’t two of him,” her uncle said with a hearty laugh.  “But I’ve known since he started working for me that this would happen, and I’ll help him any way I can.  He deserves it.”

She nodded, her voice softening.  “Yeah, he really does.”

“Did he tell you why he wanted to have one?” he asked, and when she nodded, she saw it in his eyes—the way it clicked.  

He knew.

 

* * *

 

It was quiet outside as Lebreau headed out of the house and into the sunset.  Rygdea’s silhouette was at contre-jour as he stood against the fence of the paddock once again, out of view from the house, becoming clearer as she neared him.  Everyone was inside, helping clean up after the good-bye dinner they had planned for the both of them, though for entirely different reasons.  Rygdea had asked her to meet him outside when they had a moment, and this was the perfect time, now that they had been thrown out of the house lest they start helping.

Though she knew no one would be outside for some more time, she looked around before running an arm over his shoulder and kissing his cheek.  He turned to catch her lips with his, fingers gently pushing back her hair before pulling away and turning to face her.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said, barely above a whisper, his thumb running across the top of the waistband of her jeans at the hip.  “Well, I do know what to say.  Don’t know how to say it.  Where to start.  You look so beautiful I’m at a loss for words.”

She shrugged and smiled lovingly at him.  “Just say it however it comes out.”

“I want you to come back and be with me on my ranch.  I got the old owner’s employees, the livestock, the equipment—it’s already runnin’ and I only got to pick up where he left off, but everything’s already going great.  All that’s missing is you.”  He took her hand, noticing the mildly panicked look on her face, and kissed her palm before lacing their fingers together.  “I wouldn’t have to be working every minute of every day, and we could have sex in the middle afternoon, go riding together and have picnics, and you could cook and we wouldn’t have to hide from anyone—”

Pulling her hand from his, she shook her head and reached up to cup his cheek.  “That sounds like heaven, it does, but it’s not me.  I’m not some—country housewife, I have my whole life back home and I don’t want to leave it.  Not for this.”

“Not for me,” he corrected, frowning—his tone was spiteful and hurt, and the sound of it made her chest feel tight with anger, her throat with sadness.

“No!  Would you leave your life for me?  Would you drop everything you’ve had your whole life to come live in my tiny little studio apartment with my friends—my family?  You’d be able to see the sea every day, be with me every day, but you wouldn’t be able to see Lindblum every day, to go to bed feeling the way you do every night when you’re here.  No matter how happy you’d be with me, you’d still never really be happy.  Would you be able to make that decision?”

He was silent for a moment, putting his hands on his hips and looking down as she shifted his weight from one foot to the other, uneasy.  Lebreau knew the answer even before he whispered it.  “No.”

“Exactly.”

“But—damn it, Lebreau, please.  Just think about it.  I ain’t askin’ for an answer today.”  He took her hands again and looked her straight in the eyes.  “I love you and I don’t want to let you go.”

She looked as if she had just been burned as she pulled away and took a step back away from him; it made him laugh dryly, humourlessly, and run a hand through his hair.

“Snow warned me it would scare you off if I got serious.  What’s so terrifying to you about being loved?”

“Only two people in my entire life have told me they loved me!  And now you come around with your smile and your dumb cowboy hats and—” She cut herself off, shaking her head vigorously.  “I’m twenty-two, for fuck’s sake!  You can say I’m mature all you want but it won’t change the fact that my life is just starting and there’s still so much I have to live.  It won’t change the fact that I still want to go home with cute guys and not have to worry about anyone but myself, or drink my gigantic friends under the table or just until I’m incoherent, or, or, watch dumb martial arts movies until 3 A.M. with Gadot next to me and Snow on the other side standing up every five minutes to demonstrate how the moves are really done.  That’s who I am right now!”

Rygdea went silent again, his gaze furtive as he forced himself to look at her, but never could do so for long; he shifted his weight again, ran both hands over his face, and then dropped his arms at his sides.  “Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m about to say this.  But my life ain’t changing and neither is yours so maybe we’re just not meant to be and we should stop kiddin’ ourselves that they might.”

Too tongue-tied to speak up, Lebreau took a step towards him and closed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his torso and burying her head in the crook of his neck as she held him tight, eyes screwed shut.  He tilted her chin and kissed her, the heat of it too bittersweet even as he pulled away with his hands still cupping her cheeks.

“My only regret is that I didn’t kiss you sooner so we could’ve spent more time together,” he whispered. 

 _And mine is that something wouldn’t let me tell you I love you_ , she thought.

 

* * *

 

Just as she was ready to go, with her truck packed full of most of her life as it had been at the beginning of summer and the whole of the ranch employees there to say good-bye, her eyes met Rygdea’s and her stomach dropped at the thought that she was about to lose him from her life entirely.

“I forgot something in my room,” she said hurriedly, ducking back inside and taking a pad of sticky notes and a pen before jogging upstairs.  Instead of going into her now empty room, she followed the hallway down to Rygdea’s.

It was small, and already half-packed away, almost ready for him to move out and into the house at his own ranch, but it still breathed more than hers did, with the life of someone who had been there for years about to go away.  He was nearly gone, but it still smelled like him, still _was_ him, with his old guitar in the corner and _Of Mice and Men_ on the nightstand already halfway read.  After learning that he finally would have what he had dreamed of, he’d picked it up again, but it was still unfinished.

She scribbled on the notepad quickly and opened the book to where he’d bookmarked it by folding the corner of the page, slowing when she noticed the paragraph she was about to stick the note over.

_"Tell about the house, George," Lennie begged._

_"Sure, we'd have a little house an' a room to ourself. Little fat iron stove, an' in the winter we'd keep a fire goin' in it. It ain't enough land so we'd have to work too hard. Maybe six, seven hours a day. We wouldn't have to buck no barley eleven hours a day. An' when we put in a crop, why, we'd be there to take the crop up. We'd know what come of our planting."_

Something kept her from covering it up, smoothing the note over onto the next page instead.  She shut the book and placed it back on the nightstand before rushing back downstairs and putting the pad and pen where they had been, trying to wear her most convincing bemused smile when she went back outside.

“Turns out I already took it,” she said, causing a few of the guys to laugh—some of them had taken the opportunity, in the festive mood they’d all been in, to drink a bit more than they usually did with work to do the next day.  She then proceeded to say her final good-byes, ending it with a hug to her uncle—one that reminded her why he had been nicknamed Daddy Bear.

“Don’t be a stranger, okay?  You’re always welcome here,” he said, putting a hand on her head.  “Next summer?” 

“Next summer,” she nodded, moving to climb into her truck.  As she pulled into the dusty road and drove off, she saw Rygdea turning and going back inside the house from her rear-view mirror, and regretted only having had the time to write down her phone number and an apology on her note.  He deserved better.

 

* * *

 

“So that doesn’t look good,” Snow muttered when Lebreau came into the apartment with only a box of her things in her arms and barely even looked at them before going up the stairs to her bed.

“I’m too tired, I’ll get the rest of my stuff from the truck tomorrow,” she said dismissively, stripping down to her panties—modesty be damned—and pulling on the plaid shirt folded on her pillows.  Without a word, she climbed under the covers and hugged one of the pillows close, eyes shut tight though she knew sleep wouldn’t come for some time.

Gadot blew his party horn sadly and Snow sat down at the dinner table, already reaching out for the bowl of chips they’d put in the middle.  “More welcome home dip and wine for us.”

“You’re an asshole,” Gadot said and slapped his hand away, only to sit down as well and pull the dip closer to him.  “At least leave the wine for her, she looks like she’s gonna need it.”

“You’re both assholes,” she called bluntly, her tone colder than it usually was with them.  There was a lump in her throat that she wanted to hide from them; Gadot knew better, but he said nothing and ate with Snow in silence.

It was only when he was just about to go to bed that he took one of the wine bottles up the stairs, putting it on her nightstand and sitting down on her bed slowly—he doubted she was asleep, with all the tossing and turning she’d been doing until a few minutes ago, but if she was, he didn’t want to risk waking her up.  As he thought, she turned around to look at him when she felt his weight on the mattress.

“Brought you some sad person sleep aid,” he said softly, putting a hand on her shoulder over the covers.  She didn’t reach for the bottle.

“Thanks.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?  Or just for me to stay?”

“You know me well enough to guess,” she said, and he nodded.  “I think I’d prefer to be alone for now.”

He nodded again, looking hesitant before he spoke up.  “At the risk of making you angry at me because you don’t need it, I just want to say—don’t cling to that shirt too much because it reminds you of him, okay?  It’s just gonna make things harder.  And if you have to cling to it for anything other than the fact that you miss him after leaving on good terms, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

“Screw you,” she said softly, if only because she hated that he was right and that she would have said the same.


	9. Chapter 9

Gadot considered himself a patient man, especially when it came to his best friends.  He also considered himself patient for standing weeks of post-break-up Lebreau hanging around in that plaid shirt of Rygdea’s, barely ever leaving the apartment, and constantly listening to or playing sad country songs.  At least, when she was learning them on her guitar, she was doing something else other than moping around; but there was only so much he could take without going completely crazy.

_What do I do now that you're gone?_   
_No backup plan, no second chance, no one else to blame_   
_All I can hear in the silence that remains are the words I couldn't say_

He marched upstairs and took the guitar from Lebreau’s hands as she launched into the second verse, putting it down on her bed and helping her up despite her protests.

“I’ve had enough now.  You’re taking a shower, getting dressed in your clothes, and we’re going out for hot dogs,” he said, crossing his arms to look more imposing.  It surprised him how easily Lebreau agreed, if only a bit passively, and they soon found themselves sitting face to face at a picnic table near the beach, with four hot dogs in front of Lebreau.  Gadot waited until she was halfway through her first to take a bite of his.

“I gave him my phone number, you know,” she said after a moment, her gaze runnning along the shoreline.  “We broke it off, but I couldn’t let him go, so I put it in the book he was reading before I left.  He hasn’t called.  Not a damn time.  And the worst part is, I wish I’d asked him for the number at his ranch so that I could call him.  If only just to hear his voice.”

Gadot sat in stunned silence as Lebreau kept on eating, as if not noticing—or rather, not caring—that her words were met with nothing for longer than they should in a normal conversation.  “Shit, you’re in love with him.  Aren’t you?”

She paused, setting down her food and wiping her hands and mouth with a napkin.  When she said nothing to agree or disagree, Gadot took it to mean that she wasn’t sure herself; he could see the hesitation in her eyes, the doubt of not understanding her own feelings when they took her in an all new direction where she never thought she would be.  But he also saw that it was the right direction for her to be in, even if it still made her feel so conflicted.

“And he’s in love with you,” he said, and it was no question, not even for him.  “I don’t understand why you’re not together.”

“It wouldn’t work,” she answered quickly, firmly, as if she needed to convince herself of it again.

“So make it work!  Lebreau, you’re the most pigheaded, crazy obstinate person I’ve ever met, it’s not like you to just give up like that, not on anything, and you shouldn’t be starting just because it’s a man this time.  Don’t keep yourself away from that happiness out of pride, you deserve it.”

She shoved half a hot dog into her mouth and spoke clumsily around the mouthful.  “I don’t know how to make it work.” 

“You’ll figure it out,” he said with a fond laugh.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll figure it out,” she repeated for the tenth time in the last hour, drumming her hands on the steering wheel as she grew increasingly jittery now that the scenery became familiar.  Gadot had spent the last few weeks hammering it into her head even as she started to try to back out of what he’d convinced her to do as they looked for a new apartment, and even though she had driven almost all the way, part of her still wanted to turn back and go back home.

She contemplated calling Gadot and telling him that she was giving up, but her phone had lost reception and her uncle’s ranch came into view.  It was still early morning, and the light of the day was soft, almost muted; she knew with certainty that the employees were already hard at work, no matter how early it could be for her.  When she drove onto the private road and parked the car in front of the house, her uncle came out almost immediately to greet her.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, pulling her into a hug.  “Wasn’t expecting you.”

“I actually came here on impulse,” she admitted.  This was something she hadn’t thought of, and she faced a towering obstacle—though she only had the time to panic for a moment, until he gestured for her to come inside.

“I think I know why; no guy who’s having his dream come true looks the way Rygdea did after you left.  Look, Lebreau, you’re an adult and you make your own decisions, and he’s a great guy—I should know.  And it wouldn’t be my place to tell you what to do even if I wanted to.  But I just wanna make sure you’re not doing something you’ll regret.”

She smiled, to her own surprise.  “To be completely honest, I have no idea, and I don’t care.  I’ll regret it if I don’t.”

“You sound just like your mom,” he said fondly, putting a hand on her shoulder.  “Nora’s in her box and you just gotta ride opposite of the sun for a bit.  Ain’t far, no fence to jump, totally straightforward.  She’s fast.”

“Thank you,” she called seriously over her shoulder, already halfway out of the house and walking towards the stable with haste.  She saddled Nora as quickly as she could, then asked the nearest worker to check everything to make sure she had done it properly, laughing when he offered to help her onto the horse and mounting by herself.

It was strange to be riding alone, and she felt a bit insecure, but Nora was stable, and they communicated well.  Her heart was pounding hard against her ribcage, the sound of it deafening in her ears, but even with her fingers as tight around the reins as they were, she couldn’t turn back.  The buildings of the neighbouring ranch were starting to become more defined as she neared them, as did the silhouettes of the workers, though her eyes searched for Rygdea and little else.  She couldn’t see him.

“Lebreau?”

Her heart jumped, and she turned her head so fast it made her dizzy; her hand jerked the reins and Nora blew in a quiet protest, turning slowly.  Rygdea stood in front of her now, with Lindblum a step behind him and the lead rope rolled around one of his hands; it unraveled and fell to the ground when he let it go, watching her get down from Nora.

“Hey.”

“What’re you doin’ here?”

She shrugged, smiling, and walked forward to close the distance between them, pulling him closer by the collar of his shirt to kiss him.  Part of her had expected him to draw back or hesitate, but his arms came around her as if nothing had changed, his hands firm on her back, though they didn’t stay still, moving up to cup her face.

“We need to talk this over,” he whispered against her lips, going in for another long kiss that left her completely silly and unable to think of anything.

“Later.”

He nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Wait,” she said, pulling back and putting her hands on his shoulders; dread settled in on his face, but it only made her smile, if only because she understood that he was suddenly doubting the moment, afraid of a setback, frantically playing out the worst case scenarios in his head.  She wasn’t about to change her mind and say she’d made a brief error of judgement—the fear was unnecessary.  “I forgot to say the most important part first.  I love you.”

The blissful grin on his face and his lips on hers (and her cheek, her nose, her forehead) spoke volumes, and sang what she already knew.  For a moment, she wondered if they would even make it inside the house—it was a surprise that they did, and unsurprising that he skipped giving her the grand tour, at least for now.  They spoke only once she was half-sitting up in his bed with the covers tangled around her, his head resting on her stomach and her fingers in his hair.

“I missed you,” she said softly.

“So did I.”  He pressed a kiss to her skin.  “I’m sorry I didn’t call.  I got scared like a jackass that hearing your voice would just make me want you more.  But it didn’t really make things any better.”

“No, it’s okay.  I wouldn’t have done any better—and I don’t think I did.  To be completely honest, if it wasn’t for Gadot giving me the wake-up call of the century, I wouldn’t be here.  I was terrified until you were standing in front of me.”

“Gadot, huh?  If I wasn’t flat broke, I’d be buyin’ him a car.”

She laughed.  “Well, you can give him a big ol’ country boy hug the next time you see him, and he’ll understand your intent all the same.  We’re looking into getting a new place now.  Three bedrooms, doors that lock, closer to the beach, the whole deal.  You could drive up there for the weekends and I could come over here as often as I can.  Or, or, I don’t know.  I just want to be with you.  It’s not heaven, but it’s better than the past few weeks.”

“I think it’s perfect for our worlds,” he said softly.  He moved so that he was sitting up next to her and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him.  His lips moved along her cheek, his hand slipped beneath hers to lace their fingers together, and he whispered, yet again, that he loved her.  The warm sunlight of early morning poured in through the open window, a cool wind spilling alongside it with the first chill of the coming autumn.  Lebreau closed her eyes and moved her head back against his shoulder, and breathed it all in.

For the first time in her life, everything seemed to truly fall into place.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've made it to this point, I salute you!
> 
> This fic was a very big creative effort for me, and the biggest I've ever accomplished in fanfiction to this day. I started writing it back in April after a surprisingly pleasant viewing of _Country Strong_ , and just before finals; only the first few thousand words were written at the end of spring, only for me to pick it up in August, so the bulk of it was written in a month. It is the result of my blood, sweat and tears, several hysterical conversations with my [creative partner](http://swaguhime.tumblr.com) (whom I hold responsible), and me going from hating country music to discovering several playlists on 8tracks that ended up being my soundtrack to the fic.
> 
> Songs featured in Rygdea and Lebreau's musical escapades, in order of appearance:  
> [ _Miles_](http://youtu.be/XOZzbbsD8P0) by Christina Perri  
> [ _The Bottle and Me_](http://youtu.be/tAcPwlDPoeQ) by Jake Owen  
> [ _Drunk on You_](http://youtu.be/XAQn3AAfOjk) by Luke Bryan  
> [ _Timing Is Everything_](http://youtu.be/5vO9qp9cx4Q) by Garrett Hedlund  
> [ _Words I Couldn't Say_](http://youtu.be/U6IsQv0nrKU) by Leighton Meester (originally Rascal Flatts)


End file.
